Walking With Christ

Lamentations 3:21  But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:(ESV)

There are verses we sometimes quote so often that we forget what surrounds them.

A few verses after this one, Jeremiah speaks of the steadfast love and faithfulness of God.

Those words are familiar.  They’re beautiful.

They’re also spoken from inside devastation.

Before Jeremiah speaks of hope, he describes affliction, bitterness, darkness, brokenness, and a soul that’s forgotten what peace feels like.

Then comes a remarkable sentence:  “But this I call to mind…”

He has to remember.

Hope isn’t necessarily the emotion that naturally rises within him.  Nothing in his circumstances has suddenly improved.

Jerusalem hasn’t been restored.  The suffering hasn’t disappeared.  The dead haven’t returned.

Jeremiah reaches beneath what he feels and deliberately remembers what he knows.  That’s a different kind of faith.

There’s faith that celebrates what God’s done.  There’s also faith that remembers who God is when we can’t see what He’s doing.  That faith may be much deeper than we realize.

Pain can reach an astonishing number of places.

It can reach sleep, appetite, memories.

It can reach familiar songs and ordinary conversations.

It can reach birthdays that haven’t happened yet.

It can reach holidays.

It can reach an empty chair at the table.

It can reach a place you’ve driven past a thousand times and suddenly make that road difficult to travel.

Grief has a way of reaching into the future.

Every new first can remind us of someone who won’t be there to see it.  Every milestone can carry joy and absence together.

Pain can reach far.  But there are things pain can’t change.

It can’t rewrite the character of God.

It can’t undo the promises of God.

It can’t reach backward through history and remove the cross.

It can’t put Christ back into the tomb.

It can’t separate those who belong to Christ from the love of God.

The storm may reach almost everything we can see.  It can’t reach the foundation.

That doesn’t mean the storm can’t move us.  It certainly can.

Scripture never presents mature believers as emotionless monuments.

Paul was afflicted.  He was perplexed.  He was struck down.  At another point, he said that he and his companions were burdened beyond their strength and despaired of life itself.

Faith didn’t make Paul untouchable.  It made him held.

There’s an important difference there.

A deeply rooted tree still moves in a storm.  Its branches bend violently.  Leaves may be torn away.  Limbs may break.

For a moment, it may look as though the entire tree will come down.

The strength of the root system isn’t proven because the tree never moved.  It’s proven because the storm couldn’t take it.

That’s sometimes what faith looks like.

The storm moved me plenty.  It just couldn’t uproot me.

We often misunderstand peace in the same way.  We imagine peace as the absence of turmoil.  Sometimes it is.  But there’s another kind of peace that exists beneath turmoil.

A person might cry until they’re exhausted and still possess it.  They may have questions they can’t answer and still possess it.

Their thoughts may race.  Their body may ache.  They may feel as though every familiar landmark has disappeared.

And somewhere underneath all of that remains something the storm hasn’t touched.

God is still God.

That’s why Jeremiah can say:  “This I call to mind.”

He’s reaching for the fixed point.

When everything around us moves, we need something that doesn’t.

Hebrews describes our hope as “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Hebrews 6:19).

An anchor doesn’t explain the storm.  It doesn’t tell the sailor why the wind changed.  It doesn’t stop the waves from striking the ship.  It doesn’t even keep the ship perfectly still.

The ship can rise, fall, twist, and strain against the line.

The anchor does one essential thing.

It keeps the storm from carrying the ship away.

That’s why an answer to why can never replace God.

An explanation may give us information.  Only God can anchor the soul.

This is where lament and worship finally meet.

A person can say:  “I do not understand.” and still trust.

They can say:  “This hurts more than I thought I could hurt.” and still worship.

They can say:  “I wish this had never happened.” without denying the goodness of God.

They can ask why without requiring an answer before they will believe.

Faith doesn’t require us to stop feeling the storm.

It gives us something deeper than the storm can reach.

Habakkuk understood this.

The crops could fail.  The fields could produce nothing.  The flock could disappear.  The circumstances could provide absolutely no visible reason for celebration.

And still:  “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD…” (Habakkuk 3:18).

That yet isn’t denial.  It doesn’t mean the empty field is secretly full.  It means the empty field doesn’t possess the authority to redefine God.

The circumstances say one thing.

Faith reaches deeper.

Yet.  The loss is real.

Yet.  The tears are real.

Yet.  The exhaustion is real.

Yet.  God remains.

That’s why the old words, “It is well with my soul,” carry far more weight than they first appear to.

They don’t say everything is well.  Sometimes almost nothing is well.

The body may not be well.  The family may not be well.  The circumstances may be devastating.  The future may look frightening.  But the soul can still be anchored.

Everything around me can be wrong without everything between God and me being wrong.

And that’s enough to keep orientation even when I can’t see.

Up is still up even when I can’t tell.

Truth hasn’t rotated because tragedy entered the room.  God hasn’t moved because I’ve become disoriented.

His character remains.  His promises remain.  His mercy remains.  His love remains.

Christ remains risen.  The foundation remains.

There may come days when we can’t feel any of that very strongly.  Feelings aren’t the measurement.  The foundation doesn’t have to feel stronger than the storm.  It only has to hold.

And perhaps that’s one of the deepest forms of praise available to us.

Not praise because the problem was solved.  Not praise because the explanation finally came.  Not praise because the tears have stopped.

But praise spoken from inside the unfinished story:

I hurt.

I don’t understand.

I’m tired.

I still trust You.

The storm may shake everything that can be shaken.  Let it rage.

There are places it can’t reach.