Life has been full of adventures lately. Yet, they’ve all been marked with hard edges.
This past week, I’ve been out multiple times for multiple occasions. It started with a visit to my grandma’s. It was lovely to see her on MLK day, but the lunch was dotted with notes of depression — my grandpa is slowly fading from dementia and lies sleeping in the nursing home down the street. All I could do was hold his hand, really, and sit on the mat next to his bed that the staff keeps there in case he falls. My grandma puts on a brave face, but I know she is crying inside, too.
Donuts and coffee at Glazed and Infused on Friday. Eric from Massachusetts and I needed to catch up on life, and I’ve been trying to grip my mornings with a tighter hand anyway. We rode the El and it was great, and we drank our nasty coffee, but then we dipped past the small talk. Massachusetts is hard for him to call home right now with loneliness carving out his path.
Shakes and fries later for a birthday. Yeah, it was fun, and we took over the place with our annoying singing, but the joviality went out the window when “movie night” became a poor film choice that led me to walk out halfway through. I was frustrated and disappointed at the lack of standards. Really, guys?
Days are a mixture of sweet and bitter. Sometimes the most difficult thing to do can be to try and sum up a day’s work and emotions. In our robotic responses of “Good” upon being asked how we’re doing, we tend to conceal the truth simply because we don’t have time/effort/strength to deal with our daily realities. Life is complicated and hard to examine, so we just don’t.
Even with my bedroom window shut, I can hear the El stopping and starting at the nearest station. Like that train, time moves and is constant: rickety, lurching, pausing, and crowded. An assurance, though, that has been planted deep within my mind is taken from the words of Peter:
“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Peter 1:3).
You see, even though we adventure day in and day out, and circumstances are frightening/great/uncertain/average/ho-hum, we as believers can have this confidence. God, in his great glory, power, and goodness, has given us everything we need for a godly life. We are his workmanship, and he has equipped us not only by forming us uniquely to serve in his kingdom but by giving us himself via the Holy Spirit.
I already HAVE what I require to live the Christian life. In his overwhelming mercy, God has GIVEN us everything we need, right for this moment. This current adventure, be it hard choices, standing for what is right, taking time to rest, or walking through the shadows — whatever it is, know today, as the Word proclaims, that everything you need in order to glorify God and live as his child has been given to you.
You just have to see it.
