Clinging to hope, fighting to be courageous and tenacious

There I stood in the lovely, yet profoundly foreign, Taita Hills in southeastern Kenya. Dave and I had just completed our first day of the most demanding segment of our three-month orientation course. All we had learned during the first two months had been in preparation for this phase.

 

Everything around me was alien (except for my husband, of course). And I was dreadfully worn out. And I worried, wondering if I’d make a complete mess of the coming weeks. A lot was at stake. (Click on Tears turning to joy: Could I believe it? Would I believe it?)

 

I had wandered outside, leaned against The Pearl, and cried—just soft little tears trickling silently down my cheeks. I’m pretty sure the Mwakodis didn’t know I was crying, and I suspect Dave didn’t know, either.  

 

At such times, it’s important for us to cling to hope, no matter how bleak our situation looks.

 

“Hope is a decision we make, a choice to believe that God can take the adversity, the disappointment, the heartache, and the pain of our journeys and use these to accomplish God’s purposes,” writes Adam Hamilton.

 

“Sometimes God asks us to be with people we don’t want to be with,” Hamilton says, “to go to places we don’t want to go to, and to do things we don’t want to do.”

 

Hamilton nailed it.

 

I just wanted to be finished with the orientation course.

I wanted to get back to “civilization,”

back to working among people

who understood English,

who ate the kind of food I liked to eat.

I wanted to live in a house with running water

and a flush toilet.

And electricity.

 

But then Hamilton also offers this wise, helpful, and hopeful perspective: “. . . God is often most profoundly at work in those times when we’re confused, broken, or wounded.” (The Journey: Walking the Road to Bethlehem)

 

We need to embrace that truth.

 

Henri Nouwen writes, “The ups and downs of our spiritual lives depend on our . . . attentive listening—to the movements of the Spirit of God within us. Without this listening our spiritual life . . . becomes subject to the windswept waves of our emotions” (Bread for the Journey).

 

We need to embrace that truth, too.

 

And that brings me back to my good old role model Habakkuk, who told God he was troubled over several things.

 

God replied,

 

“Look . . . and watch—and be utterly amazed.

For I am going to do something

that you would not believe, even if you were told.”

(Habakkuk 1:5)

 

And that dear Habakkuk chose to practice—was willing to practice—attentive listening, willing to wait and watch to see what God would do. He said:

 

“I’ll . . . keep watch . . .

I’ll wait to see what the Lord will say

and how He will answer me.”

(Habakkuk 2:1)

 

Okay, then, I had told myself

on that dusky Taita Hills evening.

I will do what Habakkuk did.

I will watch to see what God will do.

(from Grandma’s Letters from Africa, Chapter 3)

 

I reminded myself I needed to follow Habakkuk’s example of “attentive listening” because God had work to do within my mind and heart and attitude. What an example, what an encourager, that beloved Habakkuk has been to me for decades now!

 

Now, looking back on that evening, I’m comforted when I read Chuck Swindoll’s words about endurance during trying times.

 

Chuck prays, “Lord, we all remember times of passing through the waters and going through the fire—overwhelming tests and furnace-like trials.

 

“And,” Swindoll continues, “we have the scars to prove it.”

 

He was referring to Isaiah 43:1-2 in which God said to the Israelites, “Don’t be afraid. . . . I have called you by name, and you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you cross rivers, you will not drown. When you walk through fire, you will not be burned, nor will the flames hurt you.” (NCV)

 

Swindoll continues, “How faithful You are, Lord, to meet us at every one of life’s contingencies. . . how caring and accepting, how full of grace and mercy. It is because of Your mercies that we are not consumed.”

 

“Now, Lord, do a work deep within our hearts.

Provide us with fortitude for the trials of life—

those we’re enduring and those on the horizon.

 

Help us come to terms with negative attitudes. . . .

 

Give us eyes of faith to see beyond the predictable,

beyond the facts and figures.

Open us to a whole world of possibilities

because You are the God of the impossible.

 

“Encourage us, Father, with thoughts

that send us into our future with hope and joy.”

(from The Prayers of Charles R. Swindoll)

 

“Our hope is in the Lord. He is our help, our shield to protect us. We rejoice in him because we trust his holy name. Lord, show your love to us as we put our hope in you” (Psalm 30:20-22, NCV).