8 years.
It has been 8 years since I revisited this blog. Nearly a decade.
In that time, I have gone from being a newlywed to someone who has walked 1/3 of my life already with this bearded man. I have gone from working 40-60 hours a week as a social worker to the every-waking-moment job of raising a family. We have had a biological child, fostered three long term and provided short term respite for several more ranging in age from 8 months to 12 years. We've moved to new states twice. I have been diagnosed as a Celiac, had blood clots, soon will have my gallbladder removed, and, like all of you, have survived nearly two years of a global pandemic that, while we claim is over, is in many ways raging beyond what we have yet seen.
Life has changed in nearly every respect.
And while I have tried to start a few other blogs over the years, with different focuses or themes, I keep coming back to this one. This blog with "restless" in the title, because I feel like more than ever, we live in an age of restlessness, of unease with the status quo, of angst over injustice and a desire for God to meet us in the midst of it all - all the hard, all the mundane, all the everyday battling onward in a life of faith. I still feel the restlessness. And perhaps so you do. Perhaps that is why we meet here, because we need somewhere to bring our restless souls and know we are not alone.
I assure you, we are not.
Our God, after all, is a God of restless people. In 1 Samuel 22, when God was assembling an army around David - it was not the "put together and content" who became mighty men. It was people described in verse 2 as suffering hardship, in debt, and discontented (Amplified Bible); in trouble and angry (Contemporary English Version); men who were just not satisfied with life (Easy to Read Version); losers and vagrants and misfits of all kinds (Message). It was not the polished and pretty who became his disciples - but failing fishermen, hated taxcollectors, zealots bordering on terrorists, demon possessed, broken people. Even Hebrews 11:38, which encourages us with the stories of all who have come before us, tells us of believers who were "vagrants wandering the earth in animal skins, homeless, friendless, powerless—the world didn’t deserve them!—making their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world" (Message).
So if you find, amidst the deep gratitude within your heart for the moments of sheer joy you have experienced in these last few years, a sense of disquiet and restlessness, a longing for more of Christ in these hard seasons - you are in good company. As am I.
Let's make space for both - the gratitude and the restlessness. Both are holy. Both create space in which God can work. And both will help us move forward, into the unknown of the future. To 2022 and beyond. Let's do this. Together.
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