Forgotten by God?

Have you ever been there?

Wondering if somehow God has forgotten you… somehow grown blind to your current set of circumstances and present suffering… misplaced your assignment… or even worse, given up on you?

It can be a desperate and lonely place to find yourself.

I know, because I find myself in one of those seasons.

Now, suffering is a relative term, for sure. One person’s struggles can be another person’s place of hope or way to recovery. When I look at my life, and my family, I can easily count myself a blessed man by just about any measure of standard.

And yet, and yet.

Our family has felt the stirring of God, and the winds of change, moving for the past couple of years now. And we have done our best to respond to the leading of God in ways that we believe to be faithful, honest, and pure.

But the change and transition is taking much longer than we had anticipated, and in many ways we feel like it’s stalled out or moved into some sort of holding pattern. Good-byes have been said. Activities have been concluded. Schedules have been cleared. But the house is not sold. There is no new job to move to. And it seems like all that’s left to do is wait… and wonder.

Have we made the right decision(s)? Did we miss something along the way? Is God still and work (and we just can’t see it)? Or have we somehow strayed from his plans for us?

Then, of course, you add to these bigger questions some of the everyday challenges that so often bubble up. Things like broken bones and broken transmissions, identity theft and crazy home-hunters, and of course… allergies and an annual bout of poison ivy as spring kicks into full bloom.

And in the grand scheme of things I can see how it all seems rather small and inconsequential. We have what we need – our daily bread, our health, a roof over our heads – reason to have hope in the future. But in these days that we are living, it all feels like so much.

And yet, I have been consistently reminded by countless friends, that this is now how our story will end. This isn’t the final chapter. There is more to our story.

And I know this. I do.

I can look back over my life and see how God has brought me through similar seasons. Times of struggle. Times of transition. Times of uncertainty. Times where God felt far off and his plan seemed so unclear.

And he always provided – both in the season and in the season that followed.

Each time I could look back and see how he used the season of struggle, frustration, doubt, insecurity, and pain to grow within me faith, hope, trust, resilience, endurance, and perseverance. Not that I could, or can, get through it all on my own. But that it was, and is becoming, so obvious that God was overwhelmingly at work in the apparent darkness, silence, absence – on my/our behalf.

It doesn’t keep me from experiencing the same feelings of struggle, frustration, doubt, etc. in this present season, but in the moments when the swell of emotions are calmed just enough, the knowledge of God’s past provisions provide hope, peace, and a sense of assurance for my present – and future.

We are taking it day-by-day, and looking for God in the small things, as we wait for God to work in (what feels like) the bigger things.

I’m guessing that many of you can relate, and read your own story into this narrative that is much larger than my own.

And if you can’t, I imagine that you someday will find yourself in that hard place – wondering, has God forgotten about me?

I hope not. But if you do, I hope you’ll find a reason for hope, or faith, or trust in what you’ve found here.