Live long enough and you will navigate a time in your life when things seem to fall apart, and we can fall into dark doldrums. Shortly after college graduation, I fell into such a time. College for me had been a hard time (very much of my own making). I was working part-time as a youth minister and part-time in retail. At the time I was also playing in a band with some good men whom I still call brothers. I loved the ministry, both with youth and through music, and I was grateful for, but not in love with the retail job. During that time I began dating a young woman, and shortly thereafter I went to work for her father at a job that I believed in far more than my retail work. Life was good.
After two months though, it became apparent that my employer and I did not see eye-to-eye on some important points. In hindsight, I can see that there were places where I was wrong, and on the others, he was the boss, and my unwillingness to do things his way can only have one result. Our disagreements also drove a wedge between his daughter and myself, and soon she let me know that she didn't want to see me anymore. (Not wishing to paint either of them in an undeserved bad light, let me make clear that they were both right to make the decisions that they made. Their entire family has never been anything but good to me.) All at once I was out of full-time work and a relationship, that I thought had potential, had come to an end.
I lacked direction. I prayed. I sought the Lord. I did not want advice. I needed truth. I needed to know what God had called me to do. All that winter I must have been insufferable to my friends and family, and I thank them for their grace and patience during that time. I want them to know that they are the very ones that the Lord used to bring me back. That was a long time ago now, and I still remember the day that everything changed. Actually, nothing changed that day - except for me. I had spent so much time thinking about everything that I had "lost" that I had neglected what I still had. I had prayed for direction and then felt hurt when the Lord narrowed the path for me and caused me to grow up.
The world around us will not always look like we think it should. It won't always look like God will keep His Word. Such is the deception. But, we navigate by faith, not by sight. Faith doesn't mean that I follow what I hope to be true. Faith means that I know the truth, and I will follow it, even when I can't see. In times when we can't see, when we need direction from the Lord, but none comes, we have to keep doing what we do know that He wants us to do, as we continue to seek His direction. Let each of us prepare for the dark times. Let us "seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake His way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let Him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. 'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are My ways your ways,' says the Lord. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes out from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it'" (Isaiah 55:6-11). Blessed be the name of the Lord.