Restoring the soul.

It’s been an intense two weeks. So incredible to be in community with other people doing the same job, to get involved in each others lives, to love care and support each other. It’s been amazing to spend two weeks doing the things that are so rare with other colleagues in this job. Praying with each other, seeking God’s work in each others lives, helping each other help others. I’ve loved it, and it has made coming home easier, knowing that there are people out there who understand and know the nature of this job.

I’m also tired, from the struggle to keep on trusting that God does know what He is doing with people, that he will not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear and from helping others in that struggle. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is the call in life, to keep on struggling and helping others along the way. But I am tired.

And the only place to go in that tiredness is the arms of my Father, who has more than enough strength and grace for me and my friends. To recognise how much does not depend on me but on Him. Sometimes the darkness seems so dark, the night never ending and the candle burning far too low. Sometimes hope is as elusive as the morning mist. Sometimes I want to stop the world and end these situations in my friends lives.

But I trust that there is one who did stop the darkness, who stopped the world one day and took on the darkness. The one who faced the worst darkness of all. The one who struggled and overcame and who calls us to follow, to experience his unending strength in the darkness. It is to Him that I pray for the strength that raised Jesus from the dead to work in my friends lives and in mine. The night rages on in our hearts, souls and bodies, but it is hardly Gethsemane. The firstborn from the dead has won. There is a morning to come when we shall awake, when the struggles of this life will seem as short lived as dew on a bright sunny day. Lets live for that day.

And so, what until then?
“The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me besides quiet waters. He restores my soul.”. The road ahead is long and rocky, but I have a friend who I stumble over mountains with, a guide who will never leave my side and a hope that shines brighter than the sun. One day the dawn will break and we who shudder in the dark will be warmed by the sunlight on our backs, will roll down hills, play in the valleys and shout aloud on the mountains. Hold on my friends, hold on. There is more than this.