God simply replied, “I will be with you.”

Often in life we lean towards understanding. We think understanding will resolve our problems, we think understanding will allow us to feel safe. We spend a lot of our time trying to figure it out. And if you’re anything like me, you generally land where you started, or you don’t land at all. 

We spend a lot of time asking why.  Why haven’t I found a husband? Why don’t I make more money? Why did you let this happen? And the reality is that sorting through the hard, sorting through the anxiety doesn’t bring us rest. In fact it steals our life, it steals our joy, it steals away opportunity to flourish and thrive. 

Part of this is because we dedicate so much of ourselves to worrying, that we are unknowingly living in a false reality. We are living as if a lie is true. Underneath our worry is something we are afraid of, something we believe at our core, and that we don’t want to be true. Therefore, we try to understand in order to control, we try to understand so that we can make sure this thing we fear isn’t manifested, that it doesn’t come to be. 

It’s a broken part of a gift given by God. What I mean by that is that it is an illusion that the things we fear have the ability to become reality, and the way we feel in control of stopping that is through understanding.

 We are made in God’s image, and as image bearers we take on capacities that our creator has as well. God is the creator. He has created all things, and he is creative. What this means is that God can conceptualize something, he can think about it, and then he can usher it into existence. This is why we are here. God created us from nothing, he breathed the world and all of creation into existence. He made something from nothing. 

Humans are made in God’s image, and so we too have this capacity in some ways. We are mini creators. We come up with ideas, and we can bring them to life. Think about everything that exists in the world. Some of it, like nature, is purely God’s design. He ushered in the oceans, and painted in the trees. He breathed life into our lungs. But the table in front of you, your favorite movie, the dinner you had with friends. The stuff that makes the stuff was created by God, but the design of it was created in the human imagination and then brought to life. We have the ability to create, to design, and to animate our ideas into existence. 

This is a gift. It’s what makes life so exciting. We have agency, we have free will, we can affect environments and spaces. If I open a door, it will move. If I speak words, I can bring someone to tears. I have an effect, I matter, I can participate in this beautiful thing we call life and create impact. I can watch my dreams, the things I imagine, turn into reality and through this I can share my story. I can express a piece of my human experience through art, through writing, through speaking, and join together with others. 

Being able to create is a gift, but it comes with a shadow as well.

Because what about the parts of me that have been hurt? What about the lies I have come to believe about myself?

That I am unlovable?

That everyone leaves?

That something is wrong with me?

That I am not someone who could be worthy of her dreams? 

Perhaps in this way our ability to create haunts us. We think we too can bring these thoughts to life by our mistakes, by the rude things we might have said, by the poor performance we had at work today, by the awkward moment we had on a first date. So we worry. Afraid that the same ability we use to create beauty, will create our fears as well.

This is the enemy's dance floor. 

We think understanding will give us the ability to stop bad things from happening. We think knowing everything will give us the opportunity to protect ourself from harm. So we propel ourself more and more towards understanding, working hard to overcome our fears. 

Our fears of inadequacy.

Our fears of being small. 

Our fears of not being in control. 

Our fears of death. 

The reality is we aren’t in control. We can’t research our way to safety. We can’t ruminate ourself into social acceptance. We can’t conceptualize our way into truth. No level of understanding will remove the hardship in life.

Suffering, hardship, struggle, It’s as true as Jesus’ death on the cross, and it’s a part of why his crucifixion carries the weight and the power that it does. It’s important to differentiate however, the existence of hardship with our fear of it, and further to remove ourselves as the central agents of its existence.

The scariest parts about the struggles, the difficulty in life is in fact the reality that most often we are not the catalyst of it, and therefore we are not in control. We most often do not usher into reality our worst fears, and therefore difficulty is not something that can often be prepared for or defend against. We cannot control world pandemics, recessions, car accidents, or natural disasters. Nor can we predict them. But believing we are the source of the bad in some way creates comfort. It’s a tempting lie to believe that if we live just right we could eliminate suffering.

But this perfectionism, this performance and control based reality is in fact the highway to death. We are not, and never will be in control.

This doesn’t mean we don’t have affect or agency, it just means that we are not powerful enough to find a way to avoid the things we fear most. We will not beat death, only Jesus can.

SO what is the answer then?

It’s simple. God is with us. Always. 

The answer to a lot of our seemingly complex problems is simple. God will be with you. Even when you get the hard diagnosis. Even when your friendship ends. Even when you lose your job. 

God will be with you. 
You are never alone, never forgotten, never ill equipped. 

He will give you what you need. He will move the mountains that need to be moved, the words, the ideas, the comfort. 

You don’t need to protect yourself. You don’t have to be enough, or perfect, or have all the answers. You just have to keep showing up, and God will too. 

It’s a promise.