Trust Like Job

I'm listening to our new guitarist strumming away at Amazing Grace. The furnace is running. It's dark outside. Other than the ever improving strumming, the house is quiet and my mind has space to think. It is a pleasant evening after a long, busy day.

The last couple months have been whirlwind busy, and the next two promise the same. I miss these moments of writing, thinking, listening, searching my soul and creating word paintings of my favorite life moments. In this season we walk the tight rope of busyness and family time, as we seem to do through so many seasons, and we plan purposefully for down time when we have only to decide what board game or movie or field trip to enjoy.

We are doing great things right now. Ministry, homeschooling, work, play. In so many ways this is how I would envision our life. The children are thriving in school. I teach an elementary music class at a local homeschooling co-op. I only dreamed that I would one day get to teach music like this, in a setting that is relaxed and supportive, where parents are so involved that children rarely consider stepping out of line more than once, where I can talk of the things of God freely and teach about one of my favorite parts of His divine creation and give a little piece of that love to ten youths with quests to grow up too quickly and discover what they like best about this created world. Even if it is not music, I've given them a piece of God's creative beauty.

But life isn't usually as picturesque as it appears on the outside, is it? Recently I found myself convicted. This life we live; it is good, but there are still things happening in our life that I cannot begin to understand. Provision comes, but it does not come to the full extent that I believe it should, and it doesn't always come when we need it. Sometimes it feels late, and sometimes it feels faulty. I disrespect the Creator just by saying it, thinking it, voicing it for you to read. 

But I have felt it, wondered about it, and almost believed it.

Until I realized.

The children asked if we could read and study the book of Job together in the mornings, and leader-husband indulged this request. As we read through it in the early morning, my mind wanders as I am barely awake, sipping a cup of steaming morning tea and knowing I glean the most from reading rather than listening. So today I browsed through Job during my personal quiet time, sitting with another steaming cup of tea at our local Hardees while the children engaged in a phys ed class at our local gym. 

I realized something. I do not trust enough. I read Job's words proclaiming that he was innocent of the accusations made by his so-called friends, declaring the sovereignty of God Almighty, giving total trust to the Lord after having lost everything short of his own life. All of his children, gone. All of his servants, herds, wealth...gone. He was left only with a nagging, miserable wife and these men who told Job to admit his unclaimed sin so that the Lord would look kindly on him. Job did not listen to these men. He rejected their claims and held tighter to the Creator.

No one is suggesting that we have sinned before the Lord. We honor God with our choices, and still we wait for His timing. I put on the nagging wife's clothes or the hat worn by the so-called friends. I pick at myself, and I pick at my husband, and I wonder what we could do different or better. I pray and plead and fast. I sin, and I repent, and I wait, and I do what God reveals. When He reveals nothing, we wait some more.

And the Lord honors our choices.

On His time table, in His way, He always honors our obedience.

And I realize that I have to trust Him. I can't just say that I trust Him and really mean that I trust what God does, but not when He does it. I can't say I trust Him and then be angry that He didn't come through in the way I wanted or at the time I wanted. He came through. Every time. That's truth.

I have to trust Him completely.

With the provision.

And the timing. 

That is trust. That's what Job did. I wonder how he did that without hesitation. I want to do it without hesitation, but I have not done so. I have not trusted enough; and, therefore, have I really trusted at all?

So I will sit in my quiet house listening to the strumming and remember how God provided for that strumming. I will remember how God delivered us in our darkest hour one year ago this month, at just the right time, completely and totally answering every single prayer we prayed right down to the smallest detail. I will even remember that day I asked the Lord to take my mama if He didn't plan to heal her on earth, and I will know that He answered my prayer just a few short weeks later, breaking my heart all at the same time.

I will tell the stories and remember what God has done for us. For me.

And I will wait for direction.

Because I know that the last time God told me to wait, when I thought all humanity believed I should not, when every part of my mind practically screamed for me to do something, when other people were telling me that I should...

I waited.

And God Almighty revealed Himself in all His majesty so powerfully that none could deny His hand in the details.

So, though I am nothing like Job, nor have I experienced such tragedy...

I will trust the sovereign, Almighty God of the heavens.

And I will trust His timing.

And I will wait.