I have wanted this for a long time – to be the kind of woman who doesn’t need to see the rest of the story written to praise God. The kind of woman who thanks God while standing in life’s hallways, who can let the mystery of God’s ways and purposes bring worship and awe, and not frustration and doubt.
We’ve walked through a season of unsurpassed sorrow over the last year, and I told friends recently that I’ve felt like a farmer whose barn has burned down and I’ve been left picking through the ashes of what is left. All of the investment of time and energy and love into so many things were all held in that barn, and now it smolders in ruins. I want to do this, to stand in the ashes and praise God anyway, but all too often I’m bewildered and broken, questioning how I will find the strength to build again.
I think God has grace for His broken and bewildered soot-covered farmers. He comes to sit in the ashes with us, even more as I pick through the rubble I find that He is there with me, showing me that maybe my pronouncement of total loss is premature and that He has protected and preserved things I was just sure had burned.
My barn and fire are figurative, just a way to stuff feelings of loss into words, but I stumbled across a story where the losses in ministry weren’t figurative at all.
William Carey is remembered as the Father of Modern Missions. In a time when church leadership didn’t want to be bothered with unreached peoples across the globe William Carey burned with a passion for the lost people of every nation. William Carey ended up serving in India, and 19 years into his ministry of church planting and Bible translation the building holding his manuscripts and translation work went up in flames. In just a few hours, years of work and so many of his carefully gathered resources were burned. Carey stood in the ashes, sifting through to find what could be salvaged and he said this, “How unsearchable are God’s ways! The Lord let this happen so I would trust Him more!”
This hits deep for me. When I’m sifting through the ashes my first thought isn’t, “my trust needs to grow.” But what if it could be starting now? If the work we do is for God, and with God, is anything ever really lost? And how humbling to consider that God needs to work in me, more than He needs my work on His behalf. When barns burn I think about opportunities lost, but really I am handed a much different opportunity. Who was this all for, really? Is He really good and really in control? Because if He really is, I will really praise Him, I will really trust Him, and yes, I will build again as an act of faith that obedience is always the next right step.
“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the fines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” Habakkuk 3:17,18
Taking it Further: What opportunities are losses giving you right now? Does your trust need to grow?