persistent snows

The spirituality of persistence may be slow in coming along - but the persistence of snows, on the other hand, is quite evident. A foot on Monday, and more again this week. No matter how fast it melts off or how we're teased with sunny skies, it just keeps coming. My initial enthusiasm for "real" winter has worn right off.

The story of Hannah and her persistence, however, has not worn off. Hannah comes to mind over and over again as I pray through this topic. I wonder what it must have been like, to be one of many wives? To know that no matter how much her husband loved her, she wasn't as valuable as the other wife. Her anguished prayers haunt me.

Is Hannah an example of the spirituality of persistence? Or an example of faith? She made an outrageous promise and kept it - how it must have hurt to give up the one thing she wanted more than anything else. This morning's lectionary reading from Genesis was about God's covenant with Abraham and Sarah. I told the children at church how God promises to be with us, even when we can't see it - like the flower seeds that will grow, even if they can't see them growing under ground. Perhaps that speaks to this spirituality of persistence that has been in my mind so often - that it is true as the hymn says, in the cold and snow of winter, lies a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

Which makes my heart ache. How long will the spring I'm praying for remain unrevealed? How long will the snows of suffering keep falling? Like Hannah, I keep pouring out my heart... and waiting.

Friday August 10, 2007

It's August in Texas. People are saying silly things like "is it hot enough for ya?" It's too hot! I'm heading north. Way north - Boston. A place where they don't have air conditioning in every place. I've never lived anywhere but Texas - I'm nervous!
But what is more exciting than that is the new semester on the horizon. New classes, new professors, new topics to study. New people to meet, new adventures all around. I'm not sure where all this will lead. The future isn't so planned out and certain as it has been for the past ten years or so.
The Hebrews reading for Sunday says "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" and I'm on a new journey without seeing things clearly. This faith journey is unsettling, for others more than for me, but unsettling all the same. How do you explain to people that although my words can't convey it, I know I'm going where God is calling? That answer doesn't seem to be satisfactory in our information overloaded world.
Merriam Webster defines "faith" as belief and trust. I think those are two different things. I can believe in something or someone and still not trust it. Faith is more like trust I think. Faith is trusting God with my whole life. Trusting God with those persons and dreams most dear to me. Trusting God that God will indeed be faithful and loving and not leave us to the worst of our capabilities, but use us for the glory of Christ.
Faith isn't always easy. It's not that hard to believe in a God that you can see working in someone else's life. What's hard is having faith that God can work in your own life, in your own heart, and use you.
When Celia was about two years old, she and I were having lunch and she said out of the blue that God loved me. "Know why?" she said... "because he's using you." Out of the mouths of babes - a sign of faith and hope that has kept me going, kept me relying on God, kept me holding onto faith.
Faith will be the road to Boston, the blank notebook paper in class, the new books in the library. Faith leads me on where God wants to use me. What a blessing!