Over the last few days I have been revisiting prayers/poems I prayed and wrote in July 2012, at the time I thought I knew what I needed, and I certainly knew what I hoped and longed for. Life being life and messy humanity being messy humanity the things I hoped and longed for have not come to pass, in fact in many ways the opposite has come to pass...BUT I know that God is with me, and I know that these prayers were not empty ...
How then do we respond when our hopes and dreams are dashed?
How do we pray when the answer seems to have been no?
As I reflect upon this I can only respond by daring to go deeper, deeper into seeking God for his way, for the no may not have been his no, it was simply life being life and messy humanity being messy and I am part of the mess. So over the last months I have at times been tussling with God, I have asked lots of questions and shouted some, I have wept, yelled and thrown rocks into the sea, and I have been and am being held by the God who loves me beyond my imagining...
There are no easy answers sometimes, we fall and fail and make a mess of our lives more often than we'd like to let on, but God can bring beauty and order from our chaos, s/he can bring light in the darkness, the question is dare we let go of our dreams and allow God to dream a new dream in and through us. This is where I find myself, I need to let go, not because my former dreams were bad, but simply because I am not there any more, I have no idea what the future holds even though I thought I did...
God is more than able to bring life from death, the cross and the resurrection of Jesus show us that powerfully, and though at times they seem impossible that very impossibility somehow awakens hope. I wonder sometimes at the madness of faith, but if I didn't I guess it would not be faith at all...
