Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Lamentations 3:22-25
I will never forget the day I stood on a rock next to Uganda’s Murchison Falls. The white-capped rapids of the White Nile River surged past me, squeezing into a tight gorge only 23 feet wide before cascading 141 feet to a crocodile-infested pool below. The current’s speed was intimidating; the river’s elevation drop absolutely frightening. It was such a stark contrast from the white, lacy wisps falling from Yosemite’s Bridal Veil Falls in my home state.
Lined by dense green jungle, Murchison Falls was all things Africa. Ready to rip you to pieces, it was wild. Exotic. Dangerous.
As the wide rapids converged into the tight rocky jaws at the top of the falls, the surge of the water’s volume was unbelievably powerful. The maelstrom roared, exploding in huge sprays as it crashed, careening down from one rock to the next.
As I walked along the rocky riverbank in awesome fear (yes, I had jumped what barely could be called a fence to take pictures), I thought, “There’s no way anyone could survive that.” In the slight chance that one might survive plunging over the waterfall, the crocodiles were waiting at the bottom for a tasty snack.
The gap between me and the life-threatening chaos was several feet. It made The Assuaging of the Waters painting look like a gentle pond. There was no assuaging these angry waters.
“Would you please stand back?” pleaded Elise, one of our mission team members. “If you slip and fall, what am I going to tell Krista?”
Life-Converging Rivers
I once heard it said that if you have two consecutive weeks when life is going really well, then you are doing really good. “Two weeks?” you may be thinking. “What would I give for two days!”
Life is a series of blessings and challenges. The blessings are no problem. We’ll take as many as we can get, thank you, Lord. It’s the life-converging rivers of challenges, trials, and tragedies that merge like tributaries, throwing us into a surging White Nile of worry, fear, and doubt. Caught in the rapids of circumstances beyond our control, we are thrashed against slippery rocks our fingers cannot grasp. We know Murchison Falls is up ahead, but we are completely consumed fighting to get to a shoreline we cannot reach. We are caught in a raging current that’s impossible to swim against. We bob up and down, gasping to catch our breath. We are reaching, paddling, frantically grasping to hang onto anything.
If you think I’m exaggerating, I’m dead serious. You and I are fighting a whitewater battle to stay afloat in the truth that we are fully loved children of God. Whether things are going well or badly for you right now, there are spiritual currents we do not see. There are whirlpools of the same looping problems that spin us around and undertows wanting to suck us down, threatening to pull us away from staying centered in the love of God.
What rivers are converging or have converged in your life right now? I have no idea what you are going through, if life is good or hard for you today, but I know you picked up this book because you are intrigued by the possibility of living fully loved. When you are going through a tremendously difficult time, I know how hard it is to believe you are fully loved. That said, I don’t know how you feel. Only you know how you feel, and it’s usually not very comforting when someone says, “I know how you feel…”
What I do know from personal experience is that whatever physical, emotional, spiritual, or relational pain you’re going through, no matter how great your pain, it will not kill you. Suffering at any level is terrible, but suffering will not kill us. In our Western culture, we have become adept at avoiding pain and suffering. Ignoring it only makes it worse.
When life converges in one series of difficult challenges after another and our faith is tested beyond our ability to endure, it’s normal to be flooded with difficult questions…
If God loves me, why would He allow me to go through this? If God is good, why did He allow this evil to happen to me or my loved one? If God’s got my back, why do I feel so abandoned and alone? If God can heal me, why hasn’t He yet? What’s taking Him so long? If God hears my prayers, why do I only hear crickets? Why doesn’t He answer me? Am I an idiot for believing in a good God when all the evidence around me is broadcasting a completely different story?
As normal and as natural as these questions are when we are overwhelmed, as we’ll explore in later chapters, there are other voices that want to disrupt, steal, kill, and keep you from living fully loved. We can’t minimize the questions nor the challenges we face.
From the inner circle of my family to my extended family to my closest circle of foxhole friends to my broader circle of friends and people I know — my neighbors, folks at church, acquaintances — the list of people I personally know who are struggling with various cancers, wayward children, heart-breaking grief from the deaths of loved ones, early onset Alzheimers, aging parents with Parkinson’s and dementia, mental health issues, addictions, financial disasters, and failed businesses is one long, overwhelming list. That said…
FULL STOP.
You and I are not here to be Debbie Downers or Toxic Tommys. At this point, the slightest trace of cynicism is not helpful. Pessimism serves no one. Sarcasm is a thinly veiled attempt at weak humor and a poor defense mechanism.
On the other extreme, we don’t take the posture of Slappy Happy Pollyannas that minimize pain with self-help Fake It ’Til You Make It hacks that offer no sustainable change. No amount of Instagram opinions can help us here.
We are here for the transformational work of God to cultivate curiosity, creativity, and wonder as His Beloved children, enabling us to live deeper, fuller lives. Life can be overwhelmingly hard, but how our hearts and minds approach our challenges makes all the difference in the world.
From All-Consuming to Unfailing Compassion
For whatever difficult situations or circumstances are swirling around you right now, this is how we come up for air. It’s not the only way, but it’s a great place to start. If life is going particularly well for you right now, let this be a reservoir to fill your heart and soul.
We breathe Jeremiah’s prayer from the Book of Lamentations…
“Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
Wherever we stand today, you and I can catch our breath by anchoring our hearts in this one unassailable truth. Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed.
And so, we push back against the riptides and currents.
We fight the rapids and whirlpools.
We will not drown. We refuse to be consumed.
We are not going over Murchison Falls.
Yes, this may be painful, but it will not kill us.
We have the choice to stand on a solid rock of hope grounded in God’s great love for us or helplessly drown in the bleak hopelessness that threatens to overwhelm us.
Your circumstances may be overwhelming. Your faith may feel very weak. Your hope may be flickering like a dim candle, but your problems do not have to consume you. You are more than that because you are the Beloved of God.
I know when I’m overwhelmed, I need to step back from the slippery rocks I’m standing on before I fall headlong into the river that blurs my perspective of what’s really true. It sometimes takes a day or several for me to metabolize relational conflicts or upsetting news. A key practice I’ve learned and am learning is not to give my problems the right to consume me. Philippians 4:13 is not a trite bumpersticker or Band-Aid to slap on my problems.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
And so can you…
