Day 20 - Issue 26
Psalm 88:8 NLT
'You have driven my friends away by making me repulsive to them. I am in a trap with no way of escape.'
The most devastating realisation any of us can encounter is a situation we are unable to resolve. The impact sucks the air from our lungs and we feel traumatised. How often have we managed to devise a way out of various scrapes? But when there is no way out, we are stuck. Coming to terms with such a stark reality demands much of us. We lose perspective and our peace evaporates.
I’ve had to face my powerlessness, and found this a challenge. I recalled the many times I’d sung that I surrendered all to Jesus without a thought about what I was actually committing to. I’d been carried along with the sentiment of a song, never expecting to have to pay the price such surrender might require.
My faith, while authentic, had been pretty shallow. I was well-informed, but a poor practitioner. I pushed back against this powerlessness to no avail. My particular reaction was to become overemotional, make impossible demands of friends and colleagues, and then sink into a pit of despair. As such I wasn’t nice to know and when friends stopped calling, I blamed them for abandoning me. Godless, friendless and clueless. I must have been the epitome of Mr Angry colliding with victimhood.
The numbing impact of circumstance removes the veneer of respectable and acceptable Christianity. I was just raw and in everyone’s face. Not surprising that people were at a loss in knowing how to respond to me.
It’s only with hindsight I’ve gained this understanding, for at the time I was embedded in what I experienced as my situation. I lost all perspective. I simply had to grit my teeth and take each hour of the day as it came. All I could do was hold my ground as wave after wave of unhelpful, ungodly and hurt-filled emotions besieged my heart. Somehow I stood firm, not knowing when the challenge might end.
QUESTION: Have you ever been stuck in a place from which there seems no escape?
PRAYER: Lord, I confess that you are ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6).
