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 )

November 23, 2023 (Thanksgiving)

This Thanksgiving—and for the better part of these last six months—I’ve fallen somewhat short of thankfulness. My soul has felt buried under the weight of the mundane. Heavy, hardened.

Brokenness and toil feel foreign to us, and they should. Our hearts were made to be ravished, wooed, and adored; we were built to flourish in a world that only existed in Eden. We were made to walk with God in the cool of day, on gentle mornings, shameless—with lives so drenched in meaning that they would outweigh the ocean.

And that is something my whole being longs for, in this broken world.

( s e h n s u c h t )

But while on this side of eternity, I will pull on divine strings, reach, and beckon God within me to name and give thanks for the things my flesh cannot—for the flash of sun after days of rain; for stubborn hope that does not die (hope is eternally alive); for truth like an anchor; for warm coffee mornings in the November drear. I’m giving thanks for the fleeting nature of feelings; grey hairs; and for hardened hearts that can still unthaw at the touch of unfettered kindness, awe, and sincere love. I’m grateful that we were made for more—even as Jesus came and gives meaning to our “unseen” and “less.” What a paradox to embrace this, to live it out.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends. May you turn your heart towards what is lovely, good, and true—because the deepest love we long for does, in fact, exist.