Waiting Weakly

It’s hard. Hard to have faith. 

Hard to look at impassive numbers and see resources drain away. 

Hard to hold cool stillness. When there was death there should be have been life. 

Hard to say goodbye, goodbye to those unmoored from You, running, running far. 

Hard to be in terrible pain with no answers. 

Hard to live through this and know soul-deep that You will provide. Hard to not believe we are faceless ants that mill around the millions of others on this planet. It’s hard to not feel that need is what we deserve for all our failures.

It’s hard to have faith. 

Lord, You chastised the disciples for little faith over and over, but then tell them that faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move mountains. Are you saying that little seed of faith is sufficient but they (we) don’t even have that?

This is waiting. Waiting in need. In lack. Staring at unfinished business — it feels pointless. A waste. Why are we here? Working on this and that, when we long to be “doing something”? 

Why all the waiting? All through the pages of Scripture. Waiting on You is part of the wandering of Your people. 

Why? 

Maybe waiting, waiting in the questions, waiting with the noise of my un-waiting human soul is part of the journey. It's in the waiting, the quiet, silver purifying, heat crushing kiln of sitting in doubt and the unfinished and refusing to give in, that faith is formed. 

It’s not huge. For all the heat and pressure and loss and grief and chances to lean into relief of sin and lesser things; what is produced doesn’t look like much. A tiny, golden, striated seed. A mustard seed. 

But this seed, armed with eternal patient confidence in a God who answered and will again, the One that strung the stars and spread the oceans, is able to whittle mountains and throw them into the sea. Endurance is formed in the undone. 

Power is not in the seed. It’s in Him. The seed is precious, and hard won. But He is the prize we didn’t know we wanted. That we may know Him, whom to know is life eternal. To find Him solid in shifting sands and present in crushing grief. 

To find the Friend of all friends that we were created to know. To lean heavy in the arms of the Husband of all husbands — strong and able. To find in the waiting that we are small and weak and sinful, unable to work redemption into ourselves. To find being so small, that we fit perfectly into His embrace. Lifted and carried home. 

So wait on Him. Wait weak and weary and wounded. And refuse every lesser thing. Refuse to numb the pain — it's the kiln. Refuse to numb it with other men or media or medicines of this world. Refuse it all and bend weary, waiting on the God who sees and hears and answers. Let your faith be formed. 

And tend your mustard seed in the silence. It’s enough. He’s never measuring our faith — just having it is enough. Because He is enough.  

Wait weakly and lean heavy.  
“Why do you say, O Jacob,
    and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
    and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
    and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
    and young men shall fall exhausted
31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:27-31