June 27, 2012

It’s one of those days where different circumstances mired together create stark realities and muddled thoughts and emotions. On the date of today, June 27th, John and I are remembering our two-year anniversary. We were able to celebrate this past weekend and rejoice in God’s goodness and faithfulness over this last year and two. I grow evermore thankful each day for the Lord’s provision and blessing of John in my life, and the refining tool marriage is.

Yesterday, I received news at work that a colleague of mine is being let go due to company restructuring. He has worked for this company for over 25 years. He has a wife and a 15-year old daughter. The world of business and profits gets infinitely personal at times, as people make up the life-blood of a company and they are more than just a collection of statistics, productivity, or relevance. Yet, it doesn’t change the reality. My heart aches with the feeling of defeat he is feeling, as I watched him walk out yesterday with head low and shoulders slumping, on his way home to break the news to his family.

And, in national news, my hometown of Colorado Springs is fighting an out-of-control fire. It jumped the ridge yesterday and doubled in size last night, threatening thousands of homes and destruction imminent. I know many of these people; I’ve been in their homes; I’ve driven these curving roads; I remember these mountain faces of which I saw almost every day for 19 years. The fire rages. There is a smoke plume over 32,000 feet in the sky from it. The weather has been brutal for a week now, setting or coming close to records of high temperatures and low humidity levels—and relief does not appear to be in sight for the next few days, save for a thunderstorm possibility today that could actually make things worse.

Usually, the initial response in this is to pray. And, I have to some extent. Yet, more often, I’m left sitting in the presence of a God who I know to be infinitely personal and also dramatically powerful. Times like these of goodness, hardship, and tragedy all at once usually try to claw their way to their own answers to their own questions, Why the goodness of the Lord in my own life in marriage while others struggle with it? Why do the young, versatile people get to keep their job while one devoted to the industry and company must leave? Why an out of control fire in a beautiful place in weather where God could send rain and relief, but there is none so far? Yet, there often aren’t situational answers to these questions.

Several weeks ago, I wrote to a friend dealing with a death to someone close to her in the same week her sister was getting married. I wrote of how when pain and tragedy happen in the midst of praiseworthy things, it creates a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the two. Yet, both of them, in their own ways, reveal the glory and need of the Lord at the same time. The Lord is all powerful, but He is merciful. And the Lord can make beauty out of the most desolate things and places—redeeming and making new what seems at present to be lost or destroyed.

Today, June 27th, 2012, I stand humbled at this infinitely powerful God whose ways I do not often understand, both in the blessings and in the tragedies. But today, I also rest in the presence of this infinitely personal Lord who has made a way to relationship with Himself because He has lived this life too, and died in our place for we can never save ourselves from ourselves or this uncertain world. Today, there is a more present need to embrace the fact that we do not always understand the ways of the Lord, as His ways and thoughts are higher than ours.

But He knows. Every day has been ordained by Him. Everything that happens, He allows to happen, for His purposes, not our own. In the uncertain, He is certain. And ultimately—in all things—with Him it is well.