Shock and Awe

I had planned this post to be a recap of last week's long, lonely week without The Honey.  He was gone on travel the whole week.  The whole long week.

And then Friday.

And our nation sustained a collective punch in the gut when our own were taken from us. 

Shock and awe straight to our hearts.

So many things have been floating around social media.  The Whos and Whys of it all. 

I'm not going to go there.  Because who am I?

I can't understand God. I don't understand his ways and how big he is.

And these are the times that try men's souls. 

Because there is no understanding during moments like these.  Only true grit faith.  That is all that is left.  Faith in the One that is completely good and equally just.  The Creator who sees it all coming and whose heart breaks the hardest. 

That faith is still hard for me at times.   Really hard.

My heart feels all bareboned and bloody from the blows it has taken and the relentless fighting for the faith I so desperately crave.

During times like these faith is like oxygen to my lungs.  It keeps me alive.  And I keep fighting for it.

I was wrapping a few gifts last night.  Thinking of presents that would never be opened.  Anticipation of giggles that wouldn't be heard.  My mind keeps going to one of the boys,  his name was Jack.  He was all blue eyed and face beaming.  Just like my Little Middle.  I can't seem to get his picture out of my head.

As I got up this morning to brush my teeth and give spelling tests I looked in the mirror and thought of Jack's mother.  Today she got up and brushed her teeth and went to a funeral.  And we keep trying to make sense of the maddening world around us with our eyes looking ahead to Christmas. 

Christmas. The ultimate Shock and Awe.  For the holy just God that does still hate evil showed his complete goodness by giving up His  Own.  And He gave Him up for us.....

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

 

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

 

Ephesians 2:3-5

 

 

Shocking.   God....He leaves me speechless.  The more I know about Him the more infathomable He becomes to me. 

And I'm okay with that.  Because that is the kind of God I want to believe in.  

 

A shock and awe kind of God.

I can't make sense of the pain around us.  In  us.  I get frustrated with God.  Frustrated that He doesn't seem to act.  Frustrated that I can't understand.  But in the depths of that frustration I can't let go of this hope I have.  Throughout Scripture, in the lives of Abraham and Joseph and Daniel and Paul, these guys who were ripped from their families or unjustly accused or abandoned or tormented, they all held on until the end.  Hoped till the end.  They didn't quit God.

I hope we don't quit God.  I hope we keep fighting, wrestling with Him.  Wrestling for more answers.  And when they don't come fighting for the faith that sustains us.  That keeps us breathing.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

2 Timothy 4:7