Thoughts on Missing a Gathering

 

“I’m sorry to tell you, Honey,” Elaine said.  “But Elise was up during the night and she’s running a fever now.”

I looked at her crestfallen.  Elaine had had Victoria at urgent care the previous day and Victoria had tested positive for influenza, but she had seemed better in the evening and I had hoped beyond hope that everyone in our family had gotten flu who was going to get it. 

So much for hope…

The Waldron family was gathering in northern Virginia and we had beaten back and forth the question of whether we were healthy enough to join the others.  Now, the answer was staring us in the face and we weren’t happy.

“I was praying that it would be clear to us whether or not we should go,” Elaine said.  “I guess my prayer was answered.”

“I was just praying that we would be able to go,” I said, hearing the sobs in the background of my daughters who were distressed at the idea of not seeing their cousins.  “I guess my prayer was answered to – just not the way I wanted.”

Many people see God’s hand moving in all of the little intricacies of their lives.  Perhaps the reason why our little tribe couldn’t join the larger clan was because God was trying to prevent us being shot by a sniper on the way to D.C. or hit by a small asteroid near Charlottesville.   Then again, maybe we just got a virus at the wrong time and were suffering the consequences.

It is hard for me to see the hand of God in these things.  It seems as though an omnipotent God could prevent some disaster befalling me without having my family get infected with the creeping crud.

We live in a fallen world.  It is a world in which there is cancer and pneumonia and COVID-19 and Influenza.  It is a world in which best laid plans go amiss, and parents disappoint their children.

God is still good.

David wrote, “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” (Psalms 27:3) Some people act as though the main thing we hope for is for heaven, which of course, means that this life is full of hopelessness.  If God’s goodness is only reserved for those who have died and gone on to their reward, it would be a dark world indeed.

I suppose it has to do with my melancholic tendencies, but I often see the dark clouds and not the silver linings.  I see only the canceled trip and hear my girls’ sadness and can’t see any positives.

When I feel my heart fainting within me and discouragement rising like the flood waters to drown my spirit, I must have a solid place to stand.  Lewis B. Smedes says that “When God gets involved in our hoping, the odds get better, the stakes get higher, and the pain gets worse.”  He explains, “The pain gets worse because it hurts more to feel let down by God than it does to be fleeced by dumb fortune.”

This feels real to me.  I feel let down by my heavenly Father and wonder at His unwillingness to give me the things I hoped for.  It is like your millionaire dad saying that he is not going to buy you the Lego set you had been pining for the last three months.  “I got you these pencils and underwear instead,” he says and even as your character grows, your spirit shrinks, unwilling to hope and trust.

I have no deep insights, only that I will affirm that when all else fails, I will desperately cling to hope.  I will continue to trust my heavenly Father and His goodness.  When the floods rise and hurricane force winds blow, I feel on the edge of disaster and then, at my side, I hear His still, small voice and know that He is closer than the storm could ever be.