Faith & Doubt

A song of promise sung by people whose lives had not changed in months. Israel walked into the sea still complaining, and the water held anyway. On the hope that speaks before you can feel it.

Jacob lay down in open country with a stone under his head, running and undeserving, and heaven opened over him while he slept. A reflection on Genesis 28 for anyone who could not feel God anywhere near in the season that hurt most.

Jonah called it the pit, the deep, the realm of the dead. Every name except the one that turned out to be true. A reflection on Jonah 2 for anyone held in a place that feels more like confinement than care.

Mephibosheth's name carries bosheth, the Hebrew word for shame. He answered to it for twenty years in hiding. Then a king said the name out loud and gave him a son's seat, without asking him to feel better first.

A label saves people the trouble of learning you. It carries the ending and none of the years that led there. For anyone introduced by the worst word in their story, and for the God who renames rather than argues with the facts.

Suffering takes the large things first: the plans, the shared future, the life you assumed you would keep. What remains can feel too small to matter, like the leftovers of a life that got away from you. The manna in the wilderness says otherwise.

"Let your steadfast love comfort me according to your promise to your servant." A pastoral reflection on Psalm 119:76, and the prayer you reach for when rescue has not come: not asking God to change the situation, only not to leave you alone in it.

I said the words over communion hundreds of times before a wounded member gripped my hand and I finally heard them said to me. The Emmaus road on why you are not walking alone.

You delighted in God through the cold years and lost the desire of your heart anyway, and now the verse seems to have stepped around you. A pastoral reading of Psalm 37:4 for the betrayed, the disappointed, and anyone the promise appears to have skipped.