"God Finds Us"
by Deidre Schoolcraft
I’m not naturally very good at hoping or waiting quietly. My nature tends toward the cynical and busy. Why listen for the still, calm voice of hope when you can get a laugh with a snarky comment? Why sit and wait quietly for God’s justice when you can speak out and make things happen? Some of you, I’m certain, can relate.
Yet, dark moments come in all our lives when we can do nothing but hope and wait quietly for God. Trauma, long illness or injury, the death of loved ones, broken relationships, changes in home or institution, the endless stream of bad news about our world and its people—these heartaches often make it impossible to find goodness in humanity and make it difficult for us to eat, sleep, or sometimes move from our couches. Even the busy and snarky are brought low.
But where we are reduced to nothing, God finds us, and gives us our portion, just enough to keep breathing and moving towards goodness: the friend who shows up at our bedside with lunch and prayer, the reversal in a relationship we thought could never be mended, the voice of a powerful teenager taking on the G7, the court battle won against all odds in favor of the child, meaningful work that falls in our lap when all else seems vacuous, ministers washing the feet of would-be immigrants at the US-Mexico border, a night of needed rest, David’s glorious organ music on a morning when it was so hard to get to church.
