Thin Places

I knew there would be a slogan or two floating around for the new year but couldn’t help cringing when I read the first one this morning:

Begin again in 2010.

Every year I am bombarded with prophetic predictions that this will be the year of breakthrough. This is the year that I will walk into my spiritual inheritance! Emails flood in promising unequaled blessings in what will be my best year ever. I used to believe these – I considered it lack of faith not to.

But I’ve learned alot in the last few years – for instance, the difference between faith and presumption, between hope and illusion, between joy and happiness.

I can’t be happy as my father battles cancer or as we bury my beautiful mother-in-law on the birthday of her first-born son. I can’t be happy as my daughter fights her way back to physical and emotional strength to overcome the trauma of her abandonment that has been recently triggered. I helplessly watch as her brilliant mind struggles to complete a sentence, grappling with the overwhelming fear that her world is collapsing once again, as she watches beloved grandparents fade away.

No, I can’t be happy but I can access deep joy – when my family comes together over a meal, when my granddaughter laughs, when I watch my father and mother hold hands even as the sun sets on their lives here. Or when I see the beauty of God in every creature and all of creation, when I hug the children of Africa or simply settle in front of the fire with my husband and a good book or movie.

I can’t presume that my father will be healed of his cancer – after all, I’m not God. But I can ask for it by faith  – and I can step out each day in that faith, knowing that the God of the tiny sparrows holds him in his hands and is continually preparing him for the glory of eternity through his suffering.

My illusions died a few years back, taking hope with it for a season – but I’ve got it back. And I find comfort in the simple, powerful words of Jesus: In this world you will have trouble but take heart, I have overcome the world.

I’ve also redefined blessing and breakthrough. Why is it that we always define blessing as some form of prosperity? The words of the angel to Mary tell me a different story. This highly blessed woman suddenly finds herself pregnant out of wedlock – scandalous in a culture that can cry out for her blood. Then she must deliver her miraculous child in a cave far from home and everyone she loves. Not long after, she has to flee to Egypt and live as a refugee in order to save her son’s life. Over the years, she watches as he is both deified and vilified and finally, murdered. Blessed above all women, indeed.

I’m careful when I ask for the blessings of God.

As for breakthrough, I’ve been waiting for the intangible “it” for years, but I now realize that each day I live I am breaking through – breaking through the wall of ignorance, of selfishness, of arrogance and pride. In suffering and service, I am breaking through to a new place of seeing and understanding both the words and the way of Jesus.

I have no idea what 2010 holds, but in this season of life we have three parents who are ill – so there is more loss ahead. A catchy slogan and a few groundless promises aren’t going to carry me through this.

But faith, hope and joy will.

And love…always, love.