Lost Hope

“No one ever said that they learned their deepest lessons of life, or had their sweetest encounters with God, on the sunny days.” – John Piper

I was thinking on this concept in my own life struggles and those of friends in my life.  The type of struggles all different, but all very real and individualized.  These struggles tend to leave the feeling of a dark cloud around everything in life and quite frankly do not feel like sweet encounters with God. 

I want my encounters with God to be like sunny days all the time.  I want them to feel like skipping through tall fields of grass, lounging by a body of water on a hot day, or the pure laughter of friendship while drinking iced tea and having a BBQ.  I want my encounters with God to feel good.  I want to be good at them.  Doesn’t He want that too?

When the dark clouds really roll in and cover the sunny days, for me, it is when my own expectations or dreams and hopes have been unrealized.  The dark clouds are when I have tried once again to reach out to a future that I have longed for only to be left with dust in my hands blowing away in the wind rather than something tangible to hold onto. 

I would have been happy with that dream or hope.  I would have!  I promise myself I would have.  I would settle for even just standing there with dirty hands holding onto the dust just a little longer before God sent that cold wind to blow it away.

If we do that though, if we choose to remain in that spot, clouded by the life story we imagine, we can miss the story and life that God has us in the middle of.  We can be so clouded that we miss the joys and unrecognized blessings He has given us, is giving us and will give us.

There is this passage in Ezekiel 37 called “The Valley of the Dry Bones” in my Bible.  In it, God takes Ezekiel to the middle of a valley filled with dry bones and asks Ezekiel if the bones can live.  My response would have been, “Nope” in a confident smile of passing God’s question.  Ezekiel’s response was, “O Lord God, you know.”  God then brings the dry bones to life and joins bones together, adds skin and breath until a great army not only lived but stood on their feet.

Ezekiel 37:11-14

¹¹ Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ ¹² Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. ¹³ And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. ¹⁴ And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”

This is the sweetest encounter with God.  As He turns us from the dry, dusty bones declaring that our hope is lost and that we are cut off, to alive and giving us a new hope in Him.

This is what Piper meant.  When everything is stripped away to dust and bones and only God is left, He still breathes life.  He still gives life through His Spirit.  He gives rest, peace and a hope that cannot be blown away in the wind.  He gives comfort in the non-sunny days.   

It turns the cloudy days into the sweetest encounters of God.