My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?  O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.  (Psalm 22:1-6)

Every family that I know, almost without exception, is going through a significant trial right now.  There is either a frightening and uncertain health issue, a financial crisis, a relationship in peril, unemployment, bankruptcy, and on the list goes.

I wrote an e-mail to my brother on Easter and in his response he said “I am glad to know that you think of me”.  He thought I didn’t?  That struck me because I thought the same thing, that I seldom cross his mind either.  People feel alone and forgotten.  But do you know what I have concluded?

I think that every decent human being that is even trying to just do the right things and get by, they are all just doing the best they can right now to accept their present circumstances and just keep swimming along.  We are all like a woman who is entering into intense labor.  We grow quiet, marshaling everything within us for what we intuitively expect, lies ahead.

Believers and unbelievers alike, seem to know that our world has taken an ominous turn.  Now is a time for getting affairs in order.  But why is God allowing these extra burdens now?  When it takes everything we have just to keep holding things together as it is?

I believe that it is because He is growing our faith for what He knows lies ahead.

And try as we might, we can’t do that ourselves.  Our best-laid plans may give us a feeling of control, but they are really only a bridge of matchsticks.

As I have faced the uncertainties these weeks of an unexpected setback in my health, I have grown quiet.  I’m writing, but not saying much verbally.  It’s not soul-searching so much as it is like walking along in the woods and you think you hear something so you stop and listen.

Something is coming.

This is all too strange, too universally felt, not to indicate that something, indeed is up.  And something IS up.  Life as we have known it, is winding down.  Wherever you live on this globe, wherever you are reading this, I believe if you are remotely paying attention to what is going on around you,  you are probably nodding in agreement to that statement.

The reactions to this are varied.  Some people are gobbling down pills as fast as they can in an effort to ward off the building panic.  Others are partying harder than they ever have before.  Industrious types are “prepping”, gathering, digging in.  People are looking for comfort and answers in all manner of places.

No doubt we all are doing the best we can do figure out what IS prudent at this juncture, and doing whatever that is with all diligence.

But doing them with lingering doubt.

Our natural desire is not to have to face the uncertainties looming over us.  Even as we sincerely try to brace for them, accept them, endure them gracefully.  At the end of the day I feel like the Psalmist.  “Who am I fooling?  I am a worm.  I try, but I’m not brave.  I’m scared. “Please, God, let this cup pass from me”.

But God loves us too much to leave us longing for that kind of faith that holds us still in the storm.  And the only way to get it, is to go through that storm and watch God get us through in one piece.

Have you ever asked God to give you faith?  I pray asking for faith all the time   (I believe, help thou my unbelief). The Bible tells us our faith itself is a gift from God.  You can’t muster it up.  You can’t exercise it like a muscle and build it up yourself.  It is ONLY in having God escort you through hard, hard things, and coming out the other side of it that you experience the difference between “believing He is sufficient” and KNOWING that He is.

To an unbeliever, reading this will not satisfy.  It may only leave you with more questions.  Obviously my conviction is that the answers to all of our questions are to be found in God.  Seek Him while He may still be found.  For believers, the same holds true.  We tend to think when we obtain salvation that we have all of God we are ever going to need.  God pursues you and delights when you do the same with Him.  He wants to show Himself strong on your behalf.  Not to prove Himself.  To ease your burden.

Run to Him.  Fall upon His lap and crumble.  Let Him be God, your King of Kings!  Accept that you are weak and know that HE IS STRONG!