I was congratulating myself on all the small decisions that I’ve been making lately to go against my nature and develop a ‘second nature’ that is more virtuous – more like Christ.

Apparently it didn’t work…!

Last night I drove my car straight into the driver’s door of another vehicle after they ran a red light.  Christ would have checked the driver was okay.  Christ would have forgiven the driver’s passenger as they said they were going to claim it was your fault.  Christ would have acted like a Christian.

Me – oh no!  I called the passenger a “b*tch” and said in front of the cop that I wanted to “smack her in the face”. 

Seriously!  Just half a day after absorbing all that wonderful stuff about virtue! 

When the cop asked me if I had been drinking I replied “No!  I was crocheting with a friend from church!”.

a)  How sad is that for a Friday night

b)  If you’re going to claim you’re a church going person, perhaps it would be good to act just a LITTLE bit more like Christ!

c) when the cop asks if there’s anything valuable in your car, it’s okay that he looks surprised when you beg him to rescue your crochet

Despite being in a world of hurt, I have virtually no visible battle scars, so am seriously peeved.  Two slightly black eyes, one massively sore sternum, bruised knee & sore hip – but nothing really visible to elicit the serious sympathy I want.  Ripped off

Lesson of the evening – safety belts and air bags literally save lives.  I cannot believe I walked away without a head injury.  Prayers work – although this wasn’t what I was thinking of when I told God I needed time off work…  

Praise God the other driver was completely unharmed – despite my inability to check on him, God was looking out for him.  I went 60kph straight into his driver’s door and he was completely unhurt. 

Praying that my car is written off so we get the agreed value from the insurance company. 

Praying that one day I might actually have instincts that were in line with Christ.

Too true.

four that never say, ‘Enough!’:

the grave, the barren womb, land, which is never satisfied with water,

and fire, which never says, ‘Enough!’

Proverbs 30:15b-16

“I know that you can do all things;

no plan of yours can be thwarted.

You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’

Surely I spoke of things I did nto understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.

You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.’

My ears had heard of you

but now my eyes have seen you.

Therefore I despise myself

and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job 42:1-6

Chris Wright “I never knew such a God existed”, Themelios vol.17 no.2, 1992,3.

The Lord makes the rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous.  It’s not for me to decide who fits into those categories. 

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Eliana is on a journey with her family. They have been walking for what seems like forever, trying to reach their destination. It’s not a place she has ever been, but she has been hearing about it since she was a child. But this is not what concerns Eliana currently. She lets her husband worry about the destination. Her heart is wrestling with other matters.

You see, Eliana is barren. She has no child.

She knows that this weighs heavily on her husband’s mind, but he does not share his thoughts with her. She feels the weight of isolation heavy upon her shoulders.

Eliana’s culture is different to ours. She is a Hebrew woman. In her world, without a child, she has no hope for her future. When her husband dies, who will take care of her?

Eliana has wrestled in prayer with the Lord over this matter. She saw her brother in prayer last night & knew that he was sharing in her private battle. He is sickly and she knows deep in her heart that he will not live long. He must be worried for her future. Why does the Lord not answer?

Eliana has been praying for ten years now. She has been walking through this Godforsaken desert for six. She has watched people die in this desert as they hope in God, believing that he is leading them somewhere good. She doubts it is true.

She hears all the time from the older women that Moses gave them water when they were thirsty, that the Lord is to be trusted. Well – some of the women say that. Others say that the Lord has forgotten them, that they will die in this place.

Eliana doesn’t care if she dies. She feels her heart has already died. What is the point in living if she cannot bare a child? The Lord has forgotten her. Everyone knows, that without the Lord, they are nothing.

It’s not like God is distant – she sees him by day, and by night he cannot be ignored. Yet he is silent when she cries out for a child.

She wonders what the point of such a God is. She cannot deny he is real – he is in front of her always, and has been since she was a child. He leads her people. She eats his manna. But her heart wonders – what is the point, when he cannot answer such a simple prayer? If he can bring us out of Egypt, can he not open my womb?

Every time a kind word is spoken to her of Sarah’s barren womb being opened at such a late age, she cringes inside. God has not promised her such a gift. She understands Sarah’s sarcastic words “after I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?”

Eliana’s journey is not uncommon.

With hindsight we might envy her position. She was part of a people led from slavery by the Almighty God. She saw him by day and by night. He fed her with manna from Heaven. She never had to live with the doubt of whether or not the God of Scripture was true. She lived it.

We can see now that the Lord was with her. He had a vision for her future. He was leading his people into the promised land. In time, from her people a son would be borne who was more than just a longed for child – he was the Son of God. Through Him all were saved.

But Eliana’s perspective was marred by her personal suffering. It became an idol in her life that prevented her from seeing the bigger picture – the God who loved her and was gently leading His people. The God who is restoring all things in Heaven and on Earth to himself. The God who has promised that one day, there will be no more tears.

Eliana is of course a figment of my imagination. But God speaks to me through her story.

In my own position – with many unanswered prayers & much pain in my own heart – I am reminded to see the bigger picture.

Where Eliana saw the Lord as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, I have the Holy Spirit. His gentle presence softly reminding me that God has not forgotten me. That He is leading me somewhere too.

But where is He leading me? What of my cries of pain? Will my prayer be answered?

I used to wonder why God would be so cruel as to lead his people for 40 years through the desert. I saw it as an act of punishment of a hard-hearted God. Now, I see it as something more like the gentle guiding of a God who wishes to form his people into something more than they currently are. A God who loves his people enough to want to teach them what it means to trust. Who wants to give them the freedom of not having to rely on themselves, but of resting in the peace that comes with allowing him to lead. A God who wants to create a new heart and a fierce loyalty to Him through whom all good things comes in his stubborn & stiffnecked people. It is now an act of love in my mind.

In my own struggles, I take comfort in this. Like Eliana, the Lord has not answered my prayer for a child. Like Eliana I wonder if He is listening at times. Like Eliana, there is no end in sight to this journey. Like Eliana, there is no guarantee. Like her, my heart grieves when I’m told that if God can do it for Sarah, he can do it for me. I want to scream & shout that I am not Sarah, and God has not promised such things to me.

But the real pain in my heart, comes from seeing that people don’t trust that it is okay for our prayers not to be answered. My faith has been refined to a point that it does not matter if the answer is no. It does not matter if there is never an answer. There is meaning in my suffering. That is not to say that God wishes this, for he doesn’t. The Bible is very clear that God does not want his people to suffer and he is working to bring all things to a point where suffering no longer exists. But God has worked even this for good.

When I’m told to ‘just have faith’, my heart breaks because it denies God’s ability to work in my suffering. It elevates my childless status to something that God must fix, or else he does not love me. And this is not true.

In my mind, Eliana never got her wish. Her prayer was never answered. She died childless, before she reached the promised land. Her life was spent in a desert.

Yet she died holding a treasure of such great price, that no one could have convinced her to give it up for anything. Eliana died knowing that God had a vision for his people. For this world. She passed away praising God for the vision he shared with her. A vision of a place where there was a new heaven and a new earth. She died knowing that God’s people were being prepared as a bride and that their groom – the Lord, would one day live with them in such intimate closeness that nothing could separate them. She died with a vision of her Lord living with his people, wiping the tears from their eyes. She died childless, but holding on to the hope that one day there would be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old older of things was going to pass away.

In this is my hope. I smile through my pain because it is a reminder that one day, no person on earth will feel it again. Because each time my heart feels like it will be crushed beneath its weight, I remember that the Lord feels it even more keenly than I do. And I remember that He is sovereign.

I remember that while I cannot change this. He can. He has. He is. And He will.

My hope is not for a child. My hope is in the wonderful, overarching story of scripture. The story that tells of a God wooing his children back into relationship with Him. A story where He wins. A story where all things are being made new. Where pain & suffering & death & tears will be no more. I have the amazing gift of being able to see the big picture through the words of scripture and the testimony of the Holy Spirit to its truth.

Eliana’s name is a Jewish name that means ‘God has answered’. And he truly did. He answered her prayer in a way she never even thought to long for. With a gentle ‘no’ and a hope that allowed her a peace that surpassed all understanding.

I praise God daily that I have what he gave Eliana.

My question for you is – do you?

How could such things be facilitated?

My brain is enjoying contemplating this.