“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens..."
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
1 CHRONICLES 26-27
JOHN 11:18-46
And then, the miracle happens. Lazarus walks out. The dead lives again. But this miracle required faith that endured the darkness—the kind of faith that waits, weeps, obeys, and finally sees the glory of God unfold.
JOURNAL
One thing I have started noticing about myself lately is how often I quietly wish my life were different. It happens almost automatically. I see someone driving a new car, a family at a lake house, a man in incredible shape, pictures from vacations, success, confidence, freedom, peace, and almost instantly something inside me drifts into comparison. It is subtle, but constant. I start imagining what it would feel like to have their life instead of mine. Then almost immediately my mind begins tracing backward through my own story, replaying failures, mistakes, wasted opportunities, regrets, shortcomings, and places where I feel I ruined what could have been.
It is not always dramatic or crippling. I do not crawl into a hole and quit living. In fact, outwardly I often keep moving just fine. But underneath, there is this quiet current of shame and dissatisfaction that seems to always be humming in the background. A low-grade belief that my life somehow missed the mark. That if I had done things differently, been better, smarter, more disciplined, more successful, then maybe I could have had a life worth fully celebrating.
But I am beginning to realize this is its own form of darkness. Not because ambition or desire are sinful in themselves, but because at the root of it is a rejection of my own story. It is the inability to receive my life as a gift. It is forgetting that God did not merely love some future perfected version of me. He loved me in the middle of my failures. He loved me in the confusion, selfishness, pride, fear, insecurity, and brokenness. Salvation itself is built on this reality. Christ did not die for an imaginary version of me. He died for the real me. The ashamed me. The striving me. The fearful me.
And that changes everything. Because if God can fully see me and still love me, then maybe my life is not the tragedy I sometimes imagine it to be. Maybe the greatest gift was never the perfect body, the lake house, the flawless decisions, the wealth, the status, or the easier road. Maybe the greatest gift is that through all my wandering and failures, I have come to know the love and mercy of God personally. Intimately. Not theoretically.
I think that is why comparison is so dangerous. It makes me long for lives that are not mine. But if I had their life, I would lose my story. I would lose the specific ways God has pursued me, humbled me, forgiven me, carried me, and revealed Himself to me. I would lose the moments where grace became real because I finally ran out of strength to pretend I had everything together.
The men listed in Chronicles remind me of this. So many of them had ordinary assignments. Keepers of storehouses. Overseers of vineyards. Caretakers of flocks. Their lives probably did not look extraordinary from the outside, yet God saw every one of them worthy of mention. Their faithfulness mattered. Their lives mattered. Not because they were impressive, but because they belonged within the story God was telling.
That gives me peace. Maybe my calling is not to become someone else. Maybe holiness begins with receiving the life I have actually been given. Receiving it with gratitude instead of resentment. Receiving even the wounds and failures as places where God has met me with mercy.
Jesus standing before Lazarus’ tomb feels connected to this too. Everyone else sees death, disappointment, finality, and hopelessness. Jesus sees resurrection. He tells them to remove the stone before anyone understands what He is about to do. That is faith. Faith is not pretending darkness does not exist. Faith is believing God can still bring life out of what feels ruined.
There are parts of my life that feel dead. Dreams that did not unfold the way I imagined. Choices I wish I could undo. Years where fear quietly shaped more of me than love did. But Jesus still stands before those tombs and says, “Take away the stone.” Maybe the miracle is not that I become someone else. Maybe the miracle is that Christ keeps calling me back to life within my own story.
Peter stepping onto the water feels the same way. He does not walk on water because he is fearless or perfect. He walks because Jesus calls him. For a moment, Peter stops measuring himself against the storm and simply trusts the voice of Christ. That is the invitation for me too. To stop obsessing over the lives of others and to trust that Jesus is present in mine.
So today I do not want to say farewell when the road darkens. I want to believe that even here, in this imperfect and unfinished life, the glory of God is still unfolding. My life is not valuable because it is flawless. It is valuable because it has been loved, redeemed, forgiven, and continually nurtured by God even at my worst...honestly, that may be the lottery of all gifts.
No comments:
Post a Comment