Tag: doubt

Brief Thoughts (No. 36)

Brief Thoughts

In your suffering, you have turned to God. You have questioned Him and grappled with Him. You have asked many questions about life, and its purpose, and why things are the way they are.

It’s not easy to accept a cross like yours; it can feel impossibly heavy at times. But in choosing to carry it, you have in fact made a choice that reveals something very deep and essential about who you are: namely, that, even when things are hard, your instinct – your choice – is to follow Love.

This fact of your character tells me something very important about you. It tells me that your soul is impressed upon by God, and that, somewhere in the very core of your being, you have hope in the beauty and the goodness of life, even as a thousand pieces of evidence are telling you otherwise. That’s a rare and a beautiful gift; may no one ever take it from you.

Is It Possible?

Journal & Essays

Often, you find yourself trapped in a cycle of belief and disbelief. The position you occupy in this cycle usually depends, in large part, on the circumstances of your life: how you’re feeling, if you’re suffering, whether things are going your way.

That’s not to say that you’ve abandoned God. On the contrary, I know that you’ve sought Him with great perseverance even through long periods of darkness and illness. It’s not wrong to express your anger at God. It’s not wrong to cry to Him in your despondency. He welcomes you in your reality – in the fullness of who you are.

But sometimes, your tendency to be upset with God causes you more unhappiness than you can bear. Sometimes, seeing God as the Person to blame for the sufferings of life adds an additional layer of helplessness to your already heavy despair, and the weight of such a burden leaves you vulnerable to collapse.

So what’s the answer to this conundrum, to this longing to express your anguish in the face of injustice, and your sorrow at feeling abandoned by the One Who is supposed to be Good, without putting yourself perpetually in a place of conflict with God? How do you reconcile the truth of your hurt and frustration (which you have every right to feel) with your desire to have a sturdy friendship with God? You can’t find peace if you’re always at war with the Source of Peace. You can’t trust if you’re always doubting His trustworthiness.

My message isn’t meant to strip away your humanity, or to condemn you for feeling the way you do. I know your sorrow is real and the pain of your confusion is deep. I know your heart is sincere.

But I’m asking you to consider that maybe God is not the Author of your misfortunes. Maybe God is not the One willing your suffering.

Is it possible that, in the midst of your trials, God has been with you in a profoundly important way? Is it possible that God has always been for you, not against you, and weeps with you in your pain? Is it possible that God keeps a light on for you, even as the darkness swirls around, threatening to consume you but never actually penetrating the true, unbreakable center of who you really are?

Is it possible, in other words, that God is, in fact, just as Good as You so were so desperately hoping He’d be?

Brief Thoughts (No. 25)

Brief Thoughts

I can’t abandon my belief in the miraculousness of things. I can’t abandon my childlike trust that GOD does, indeed, sometimes lead by the very mysterious and inexplicable ways that seem almost magical, and that He can make the impossible possible.

And yet – there is this recognition that terrible things happen, and often the reality of things is all there is. You know what I mean: the apparent randomness and tragedy of things, with no miraculous Divine Intervention sweeping in to change the course of events.

It’s a hard thing to come to terms with. It’s enough to shake even a strong person’s faith.

Persisting through Doubt

Journal & Essays

LORD, sometimes my faith is in a crisis of doubt because it feels like all the things I’m hoping for—and all the things You seem to have counseled me to wait upon with trust—have failed to appear, have neglected to break upon the scene as promised.

Then I question whether my belief in You is really not just an illusion, conceived by the most hopeful part of my nature in an insistent desire to know that all will be well, and that there is a deeper, richer, more magical way of looking at life.

And in the face of people who would spurn Your existence, and tell me that my faith is only child’s play and in controversion of sound logical thinking—well, what can I say? I still believe, yet it must seem utterly foolish of me to persist. Why continue to trust when there is scant evidence that my trust is well-placed?

Nonetheless, GOD, my heart tells me that there is Truth in You, and my spirit is awakened to the strongest Love in Your Presence.

How can these things be explained to someone who thinks the mind is the King of our existence, that logic is the only path we have for arriving at truth?

GOD, the reasons I love You are simple and complicated all at once. But I know that, for You, the only thing that counts is the intention of the heart to act and live in love. You know my love for You, even as I am very imperfect at making it clear in the way I live.

It relieves me to know that Your ways are kindness and peace, and that the things You ask of me are not an impossible burden, but simply an invitation to a richer, more meaningful life.

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