April 27, 2024 (God of the Impossible)
“I Hate it Here” has been my favorite #TTPS song on loop, and I’m not sure what that says about me, other than that I might be mildly depressed at the moment lol.
I’ve started casually referring to myself as a “cynical idealist,” aka: someone who fervently longs for perfection, utopia, untainted beauty, and wholehearted love at every turn. Yet, someone who also has been burned—more than a few times—by lesser, broken versions of those very same things. It’s resulted in a strange juxtaposition—a wrestling duality—between light and dark; contentment and despair; hope and fatalism.
Additionally, I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that I don’t actually have that much faith, if the definition of faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Now, in my 30s, I’ve experienced enough of this world to have tasted (and recoiled at) its bitterness: the way best-laid plans can go awry; the way we don’t always get what we want; and how the masks people wear can be so deep, so pervasive and convincing, that when the real person underneath is finally revealed, you’re left reeling and wondering and questioning your entire reality. It’s hard to have faith, to have hope for the impossible good, when you’ve tasted so much bitterness. It’s easy to sink into a sort of apathetic resignation.
But I don’t think any of us wants to live this way. My not-so-secret truth is that I DO hope for more. I DO long for more. I’m just too scared to say it out loud.
I keep remembering, reading about, and coming back to this God I follow. I can’t escape the grace that holds me. The other night I went on a furious search through scripture, trying to convince myself of things that feel unconvincing. So I now have an entire running list, in my journal, of verses where God has declared, and has indeed done, the statistically impossible: opening wombs; raising the dead; defeating armies; creating and sustaining whole worlds by the vapor of his breath. I’m clinging to that notion right now: that somethings can be made out of nothings; that what feels impossible to my imagination is not impossible to God.
This, more than anything else, is what’s giving me hope: hope for change, hope for the future, hope in the middle messiness of life. It’s the hope and truth that God is bigger and more encompassing than anything I can fathom. And that the author of the world is greater than the laws of nature, the statistical improbabilities, and the losses that seem to confine it.
“Jesus looked at them and said, ‘with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” —Matthew 19:26
“For nothing will be impossible with God.” —Luke 1:37
“Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son." —Genesis 18:14
“I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?” —Jeremiah 32:27
“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” —Hebrews 11:6
“I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” —Job 42:2
“Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.” —Luke 1:36-37
“As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.” —Romans 4:17
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” —Isaiah 43:18-19
and finally,
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!” —Ephesians 3:20
A not-so-finished list, but a list nonetheless.
( s e l a h — a m e n )