We’ve all felt stuck in the middle—watching God work powerfully somewhere else while wondering if He’s forgotten us. In Genesis 21 the long-promised son finally arrives and the house fills with laughter, yet Isaac almost vanishes into the background of his own story. Even there, something unseen is still moving.
We’ve all prayed about something so long that we start to wonder if God has put us on hold—and whether anyone is ever going to pick up. In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable about a powerless widow who keeps pleading before a judge who neither fears God nor respects people, and asks whether his people will keep crying out to him day and night or simply lose heart.
We’ve all held something we couldn’t restore—a plan, a relationship, a season of life that’s gone dry—and kept clenching it anyway, as if sheer will might put flesh back on the bone. Naomi knew that feeling: she went away full and came back empty, and the Book of Ruth shows what God does with that kind of emptiness.
If God is a God of justice (and He is), then how do we live in a time of injustice? David wrestles with this in the middle of Psalm 7.
If God is a God of justice (and He is), then how do we live in a time of injustice? David wrestles with this in the middle of Psalm 7.
David doesn’t ask God to only judge others, but himself, too. How can he do that? Does he believe himself to be above sin? Or is it that his hope isn’t in himself?
Problems pile on until life feels more like a grave than renewed life, and we wonder where God is. The Book of Ruth opens with Naomi back from Moab empty and bitter, renaming herself Mara because the Almighty has dealt harshly with her—still certain God is King, yet unable to see whether that King still loves her. Is there hope when we find ourselves feeling the same way?
Sometimes our attempts to fix our situations we need rescue from go as badly as poorly planned April Fool’s jokes.
The disciples at first saw an empty grave, but not a Risen King. We can find ourselves doing the same.
Pastor Tim reflects on the empty tomb’s uncertainty before the disciples encountered the Risen Jesus.