Delight

No longer will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called [“My Delight is in Her”],
and your land [“Married”];
for the LORD will take delight in you,
and your land will be married.
As a young man marries a young woman,
so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:4-5)



A 21-year-old woman in Shanghai has made news this week for deciding that her best chance to win back her ex-boyfriend is to be someone else. Or at least to look like someone else.

The young woman has made the decision to have multiple plastic surgeries designed to make her look like actress Jessica Alba. It seems that throughout their year and a half relationship, her boyfriend has been obsessed with the actress. He hung pictures of Alba all over the apartment the two shared and talked about her constantly. He even bought his girlfriend a blonde wig to wear, though she says he never came out and told her that he wanted her to look more like Alba.

Well, no. Because that would be creepy.

The young woman actually showed quite a lot of sense when she broke up with the guy over his obsession. Now, though, she says she misses him and wants him back. “My friends…suggested I do plastic surgery to look like her,” she told reporters at a Plastic Surgery Hospital in Shanghai. The hospital has agreed to do the multiple surgeries that will be necessary without charge, “to showcase their surgery skills.” (See the story at www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6134TQ20100204)

In fairness, the director of the hospital has encouraged the young woman to think seriously about the procedure, but she seems to think there’s something empowering in it. “As a member of the younger generation in this country,” she says, “I have a choice to decide what I want in life.”

That’s true, I suppose. It’s just sad that what she thinks she wants is to be someone else.

I’m pretty sure she’s not alone, though. Our society is full of messages telling us that who we are isn’t good enough. We’re supposed to lose weight, get fitter, have better skin and hair and whiter teeth. We have to look younger, for goodness’ sake. We’re supposed to be wealthier so people will think we’re successful, or at least dress and drive and travel and play and live like we are. Our sex lives are supposed to be more exciting, and there’s even a pill for that. We’re supposed to be better educated, our houses are supposed to be cleaner, our clothes are supposed to be nicer, our children are supposed to be more precocious.

Name something about yourself or your life, and there’s probably someone somewhere who will sell you something “guaranteed” to make it better. Or a fantasy to make you forget that it isn’t better. Advertising depends on it. Political campaigns stand or fall on it. The credit industry relies on it. Retailers cash in on it. Drugs and alcohol and pornography thrive on it.

To quote singer/songwriter Steve Earle: “It’s called snake oil, y’all; it’s been around for a long, long time.”

But among all those messages telling you that you aren’t good enough, telling you all the ways you need to be different, it’s easy to miss the one telling you that you’re loved, valued, appreciated, and accepted. Right now. Today. Just as you are.

Sometimes the church, intentionally or otherwise, communicates a picture of God as vengeful, judgmental, and stern. That’s the danger in trying to take seriously God’s holiness, and the high purpose to which he calls his people. It can almost sound, sometimes, as if we’re just proclaiming another way in which people aren’t good enough – that they need spiritual plastic surgery in order for God to love them.

But look again. Listen again. The Bible is full of passages like the one in Isaiah that affirms God’s “delight” in the people that he made, and his determination to live in happiness with them “as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride.” Don’t read that as some kind of mushy, vapid, puffy romance-novel love. God knows full well what it will take to have that kind of relationship with human beings. He knows that we aren’t movie-star material, spiritually speaking. He knows our sin, and has always known the price forgiveness and grace would demand. And he paid that price on a cross in the Middle East, two thousand years ago. Paid it for everyone who lived before, and everyone who will ever live since. And in paying it, he spoke one message, clearly and plainly: you and I matter to him. We don’t have to be different to earn his love. He values and appreciates us as we are, spiritual warts and blemishes and all. He delights in us, rejoices over us, and chooses to live with us and call us his.

Pass that message on to the children in your life who feel that they don’t measure up. Pass it on the friend battling a weight problem, or your colleague at work who’s struggling with alcoholism. Pass it on to the friend who can’t find the self-esteem in her to get out of an abusive relationship, and to the neighbor who can’t find a job, and to the sibling who’s going through a divorce, and to the single parent who can’t quite imagine another day of raising a child alone. Pass it on to the person stuck in a dead-end job at a business you frequent, and pass it on to a friend’s son who can’t seem to pass his GED. And pass it on to that brother or sister you sit near at church, struggling over and over with the same sin.

But if you pass it on, make sure you reinforce it with your actions. Because telling them that God loves them and accepts them just as they are means that you have to, as well. Why would they believe it otherwise? But if you show them that you love and value them, then they might just start to believe it when you tell them that God does, too.

Oh, and please – pass it on to the person in the mirror from time to time. Because we all have days when we have a hard time believing in our worth. And we all need reminding from time to time that there’s no way that God can love us anymore than he already does.

Consider this your reminder.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, Today’s New International Version TNIV (r), Copyright (c) 2005 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.

Stuck

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:11-13)



I blew it.

I wrote last week about being “more thoughtful and more prayerful about how we handle difficult, inconvenience, and injustice.” I said – what was it? – oh, yes: “When we take the difficulties of life and the misunderstandings of others on our shoulders with love, kindness, generosity, and forgiveness, the world must take notice.” I insisted that it’s not enough that we be willing to suffer for Jesus, but that “we’re called to suffer like him, as well.” (I have to be honest; I was especially proud of that turn of phrase.) I even got a little preachy about Christians who don’t handle inconvenience well – like, say, a diverted or cancelled airline flight.

So this week I got the chance to practice what I preach.

Specifically, I got stuck in Little Rock, Arkansas.

I’m writing this while a snowstorm blows outside, laying down a few inches of the white stuff on top of some sleet and freezing rain. By Chicago standards, it’s really not much of a snowstorm. By Little Rock standards, it’s off the charts. Nothing’s coming in to the airport, nothing’s going out. (As the nice lady at the counter explained to me – “We’re out of planes, honey.” They call everyone “honey” in Little Rock.) Unless anyone knows a place where I can rent a dog sled and pack of dogs in Little Rock, I’m out of luck.

I’m OK with that, though. I’d like to be home with Josh and Laura, but I’m warm and dry and comfortable. It was last night that I blew it, with the lady at the car-rental company. After my first flight got cancelled, I thought about driving home. The snow hadn’t really started yet, the roads were fine, and I thought about just taking the rental car I had back to Chicago. I called the company, and was informed that the particular agency I had rented from “wasn’t corporate”. That meant that there was no place in Chicago I could leave the car. In fairness to me, she wasn’t very helpful or nice. I told her that I understood the problem, and I hoped that she could understand mine. The best she could do was tell me that I could drop the car at an agency in Indianapolis. Which didn’t help at all. Finally, I asked what would happen if I just left the car at my hotel and rented from another agency to drive back to Chicago.

She shouted at me: “I don’t know! That’s never happened before!”

I found that hard to believe, and told her so. Loudly. Never? Really? No one’s ever rented a car from you and then had to change their plans? I was not nice. Indignant, that’s the word. Did she not care about her customers? Couldn’t she work with me in an unusual situation, instead of insisting on her policy?

In short, I didn’t do exactly what I said we Christians should. I didn’t handle this particular difficulty with love, kindness, generosity, or forgiveness.

I realized it, eventually. When I did, I went back and read Philippians 4 again, where Paul says he’s “learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” If you know anything at all about Paul, then you know that he found himself in some fairly hair-raising situations. He was hungry sometimes, near the point of literal starvation. He spent some considerable time in jail. He narrowly escaped lynch mobs more than once. He had health problems, relational problems, and he was even shipwrecked once. And that doesn’t even include the stress of travelling all the time, dealing with church problems, and putting up with people who went out of their way to sabotage everything he tried to do.

So when Paul says he’s learned to be content, I tend to want to pay attention.

The secret, though, is a little tough to hear. Paul says that his ability to be content whatever the situation comes out of replacing himself as the one around whom the world revolves. That’s my problem, I guess. In some way, I feel that I’m entitled to be home with my family when I want to be. I feel I’m entitled to have others bend over backward to help me with my problems (especially when I’m paying them!) But with his believe that Jesus had risen from the dead and his decision to let Jesus call the shots in his life, the center of gravity in Paul’s life changed. What happened to him mattered not nearly as much as whether or not he lived a life that was faithful to his new calling. And with that perspective, things that he once would likely have considered crises became non-events.

And the serendipity of this change, for Paul, was that Jesus became not just Lord but “Him Who Gives Me Strength.” By choosing to trust the Lord and not hit the panic button when things seemed to go off the rails in his life, Paul discovered a source of strength to endure and overcome that he never would have known otherwise. He discovered that he could not only survive in difficult situations, but that he could thrive – because where his strength ended, there Jesus’ began.

When we hit the panic button too early, we invariably lurch into crisis mode and try to come up with our own solutions to our problems. Trouble is that our own solutions are almost always about finding a quick way out, with as little personal discomfort as possible. And sometimes, when we’re in crisis mode, we don’t care who we hurt.

Worst of all, when we chase our own solutions, we miss out on what the Lord would do for us.

So here’s what we do, I think. First, we tell God that, with his help, we’re going to find our contentment in him. We’re going to trust in his goodness and generosity, and when times are lean we’re going to believe that in him we’ll have all the strength to endure whatever we have to endure.

Secondly, we tell someone else. We tell other believers that we’re working on being more content in God’s power instead of our own schemes. We ask them to pray with us and for us, and we ask if we can talk to them about the things we learn about God and ourselves.

Finally, we resist the urge to hit the panic button when things seem to go bad. When we feel like lashing out at someone, we pray instead. When you feel like compensating for sadness or anger with sundaes or substances or sex or shopping, we sing worship songs or read Scripture. When we feel like hiding or sulking, we seek out people who will bless us, or who we can bless.

And when we’re weak, we’ll seek him out and discover, with Paul, that God is “Him Who Gives Us Strength.”

Sometimes there’s no better way to learn that than to have your plans changed for you.

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"With Gentleness and Respect"

But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. "Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened." But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.
- 1Peter 3:14-16 (NIV)


A Jewish teenager from New York on his way to spend some time with his grandmother in Louisville, Kentucky, had his flight diverted to Philadelphia this morning. When the plane landed, he found himself greeted by bomb-sniffing dogs and the FBI.

All because he wanted to pray on the flight.

The teenager, Caleb Leibowitz, wanted to use the time on the plane to catch up on his usual morning prayers. But Caleb prays using traditional Jewish tefillin – small Scripture-filled boxes worn strapped to the left arm and forehead. A passenger noticed as Caleb removed the boxes and began strapping them on. Mistaking the straps for wires, she notified a flight attendant, who asked the boy what he was doing. When he answered that he was praying, without explaining the tefillin, she notified the crew, who made the decision to divert to Philly.

As soon as it became clear to Philadelphia police and TSA representatives that Caleb posed no threat, he was put on another flight to Louisville.

What impresses me about this story is the way that Caleb, his family, and his Rabbi responded to the situation. Caleb’s grandmother, after acknowledging that police pointed guns at Caleb and handcuffed him, went on to quickly add that they only pointed their guns “a little bit” and that the handcuffs were “only for a short period of time.” She acknowledged the fact that terrorist threats had made Americans “skittish,” and said she hoped people would learn about the rituals and not be fearful.

Caleb’s Rabbi, Shmuel Greenberg, said that Jewish people “can’t expect the whole world to know what this ritual is all about.” He added, “When we see people carrying explosive material in their shoes and their pants and I am the passenger next to him and see someone strapping, I would panic too.”

“I would suggest, pray on the plane and put the tefillin on later on,” he finished.

Caleb, for his part, was helpful and cooperative in explaining the prayer ritual to police and other officials who questioned him.

Honestly, the first thought I had as I read the story was, “Here’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.” It doesn’t seem like that’s on Caleb’s radar, or his family’s or his congregation’s, however. I’m sure Caleb was embarrassed by the incident. I’m sure that someone could make a very strong case that his rights were violated – however well-intentioned the violation may have been. I imagined that, if they were so inclined, they’d stand a good chance of winning some damages from the airline. But none of that seems to be on their minds.

In fact, if I didn’t know that Caleb was Jewish, I’d say that he, his grandmother, and his Rabbi, acted in a very Christian way.

Unfortunately, I can’t say that about some Christians I know.

Inconvenience some Christians I know, and all hell breaks loose. Seriously – divert a flight carrying some Christians I know for a good reason, and be ready to hear about it. Or get stuck in traffic with some Christians I know, and you’ll think traffic headaches are the end of the world. And if it’s a real hardship? A real slight? A real injustice? Oh, look out. Some Christians I know are very knowledgeable about their rights. Some Christians I know are very aware of what they’re entitled to, and will make sure you’re aware, too, if you dare deprive them of it. Any of it.

Please understand; I’m a great fan of individual rights. But some of us seem to think that it was Jesus who guaranteed Americans the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But it wasn’t Jesus who said that. Jesus said things like, “Don’t be surprised if the world hates you,” and “take up your cross and follow me.” Peter said that we should respond to persecution with a gentle and respectful testimony to the hope that we have in Christ. That’s real persecution, mind you – not jokes by our co-workers or an ordinance from the town council that says we can’t put a nativity scene in the square or a vote on gay marriage that doesn’t go the way we’d prefer.

Jesus was unjustly sent to the cross, yet he didn’t stand up for his own rights. He didn’t threaten legal action or plot elaborate revenge against his tormentors. “As a sheep before her shearers is silent,” the prophet said, “so he did not open his mouth.” If we’re going to follow him, where do we get the idea that it’s OK for us to bear our crosses complaining, arguing, and demanding our rights the whole way?

It’s not enough, in the end, that we be willing to suffer for him. We’re called to suffer like him, as well. There is no greater testimony to the power of God, the love of Jesus, and the presence of the Spirit in a person’s life than graceful suffering. When we take the difficulties of life and the misunderstandings of others on our shoulders with love, kindness, generosity, and forgiveness, the world must take notice. They can’t dismiss us as cranks, or claim that our boorish behavior brought that suffering on us. It may even be, Peter says, that the very people who abuse us, insult us, and misunderstand us may be brought to shame when they see us take what they give us with courage, grace, and even joy. It may be, like the centurion at the cross who saw how Jesus died, that they might even say, “Surely this person is a child of God.”

Let’s be more thoughtful and more prayerful about how we handle difficulty, inconvenience, and injustice. May we put aside anger, suspicion, cynicism, and bitterness. May we not fear what the world fears, but “rejoice that [we] participate in the sufferings of Christ.” May we speak boldly, but more about Jesus and not so much about our own rights. May we give more thought and prayer to our words and actions when we’re under duress. And may the world speak highly of our Lord because we wear his name.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, Today’s New International Version TNIV (r), Copyright (c) 2005 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.

The God Who Sees and Cares

The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.” (Exodus 3:7)



You’ve seen the pictures, heard the reports. Numbers so astronomical after a while start to make us numb. “Thousands are dead,” we say, and so we don’t have to think much about those thousands of individuals and the thousands and thousands of individuals whose lives they were a part of. When we talk about as many as a third of Haitians sleeping outside because they don’t have safe shelter, we don’t have to picture the faces of the men, women, and children in that mass of people.

There’s something in us, a psychological switch that helps us cope with catastrophes like this one by keeping them at a distance. TV evangelist’s Pat Robertson’s switch must have been flipped when he tried to connect the Haiti earthquake – and all of the other ills that nation has endured – to a “pact with the devil.” According to Robertson, slaves on Hispaniola supposedly made the pact so that they’d have success in a revolt against their French masters, and that now the nation born in that revolt is under God’s curse.

One problem with Robertson’s theory is that it’s based on a legend used to discredit the slaves and the revolt, and to explain the vodou that’s pretty widely practiced there. There was no pact with the devil, no Satanic bargain that makes Haiti’s problems God’s quid pro quo. Sorry, Pat. You can’t explain such a tragedy so simply and easily.

I’m not really mad at Pat Robertson. His response struck me as more pointless than offensive. His organization’s humanitarian arm is, apparently, at work providing supplies and other relief. He asked for prayers for the Haitian people. I really think Pat was doing what a lot of us do in circumstances like this: trying to keep some distance from the suffering by forcing it to make sense. There must be a reason, we think.

And there are, of course. For one thing, government corruption and a global weariness about Haiti have led to the country’s being stuck for decades as a “developing nation.” They don’t have the luxury of being prepared for emergencies like this. Substandard housing collapses in earthquakes. Subsistence economies, too. By and large, the people who survive this ordeal will be the people who can afford to survive, the people whose resources buy them better homes, medical care, food, water, and other necessities. As was true in Hurricane Katrina, or the tsunami in southeast Asia, or in most other natural and man-made disasters known to history, it’s the poor who suffer most. They can’t escape the effects of something like this.

So there’s your reason, Pat. Curse? Only the curse that has infected our world since human beings first thought they knew better than their Creator. Pact with the devil? Personally, I think he’s made much more progress by slyly teaching us that we aren’t our brothers’ keepers, aren’t responsible for each other, are free to leave other human beings created by God alone in their poverty, pain, and hopelessness.

I get why Pat Robertson might not want to think about that. I get it, because sometimes I don’t want to either. In some ways it’s easier to explain away catastrophe than to kneel down beside someone who’s trapped in the rubble of another one and not shy away from getting our hands dirty. I seem to remember Jesus’ own followers arguing about how to explain a man’s blindness theologically. Jesus shut them all up: “This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3) Then Jesus became the one through whom those works would be done. He engaged the man, interacted with him, even had him play a part in his own recovery. Jesus cared about the man enough to come alongside and heal him.

That, by the way, is what God does. He hears the cries of the people he loves, the people he made. That’s Americans and Haitians, rich and poor, church people and unchurched people, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and so on. He’s always come near when he’s heard human beings crying out – never nearer than when he came in Jesus. When something like this earthquake happens, it’s easy to ask, “Where is God?” God is in the middle of Port-au-Prince tonight, suffering with those who are suffering. He gets his hands dirty; he heals, he helps, he rescues, he comforts, he forgives, and he gives life.

Most of the time, he does so through us.

He doesn’t ask us to explain away the suffering we see in the world. He doesn’t need us to defend his reputation as a loving God through argument and debate – certainly not while people hurt and suffer and die. He asks us to be where he is, among his suffering people, doing his work. Not so we can gain new church members or make ourselves look good, but because in doing so we testify to the presence and power of the Kingdom of God.

That’s the central truth of God’s kingdom, you know? Not “God has forgiven your sins” or “you have a home in heaven when you die.” Those things are wonderfully true, but they’re not the Big Idea, the Main Thing. The Main Thing, the One Thing to get straight about the Kingdom of God is that it means that God is here. Though Creation has been broken, though human beings are so twisted that we’re sometimes barely recognizable as God’s Creation at all, though we do terrible things to each other and sometimes suffer seemingly random catastrophe, God is here. He still rules, and his reign has broken in to the world: first through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and then through people who recognize his Kingdom for what it is and start to live it out. As we live out compassion, justice, holiness, forgiveness, and redemption, the light of his rule begins to dawn and the shadows of sin and evil start to recede.

Follow your Creator in seeing the misery of his people, hearing their cries, and going to them in their suffering. Resist the urge to hold the suffering at arm’s length. God doesn’t. He holds the suffering in his arms and gives everything for them.


Click here to give to Healing Hands International to assist earthquake victims in Haiti.


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Standing on the Rock

Yes, my soul, find rest in God;
my hope comes from him.
Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
My salvation and my honor depend on Godc;
he is my mighty rock, my refuge.
Trust in him at all times, you people;
pour out your hearts to him,
for God is our refuge. (Psalm 62:5-8)



The young man couldn’t speak. For several seconds, he was at a loss for words. Or too emotional to speak them out loud.

He’d just watched his football team lose, in the biggest game of his life. Watched, because he was injured only five plays into the game. He’d taken the snap, optioned to his left, and was hit by a defensive lineman. “I’ve taken that hit over and over my whole life,” he said. This time, though, wasn’t like the other times. A pinched nerve, maybe: “I’m not in any pain,” he explained in the post-game interview. “My arm’s just dead.”

So he watched, because a quarterback with no feeling in his passing arm can’t do much to help his team. He watched a true freshman try to fill his shoes, as if a freshman with little game experience could ever come into a National Championship Game and fill the shoes of a senior Heisman Trophy finalist. He watched his team try to rally, fight to keep it close, and then watched the freshman fumble away the ball and the game late in the fourth quarter.

The TV reporter had the nerve to ask him how it felt. “What was it like for you to watch this game, your last game in a Longhorn uniform, from the sideline?” Just doing her job, I suppose, but it seemed so heartless to ask that question, then, while the Alabama Crimson Tide soaked their coach with Gatorade and took turns kissing the crystal National Championship Trophy.

But Colt McCoy took a deep breath. He looked down, shook his head, chuckled, stammered a little. For a full eight or ten seconds, the only sound was the background noise of the stadium. But the words finally came. “I’d have given…I’d have given everything I have to be out there with my team…” he said, in measured phrases. Kind of cruelly ironic, then, that the price the game demanded of him was his right arm – the one thing his team needed. McCoy congratulated Alabama on their win, complimented his team for their fight, and his replacement, Gary Gilbert, on the game he played. He said all the right things, and could have stopped there.

But, no, you kind of got the feeling that he couldn’t have.

“I always give God the glory,” he went on to say. “I never question why things happen the way they do. God is in control of my life, and I know that…I’m standing on the rock.”

Having watched McCoy over the last few years, I feel pretty confident that those words were sincere. He has consistently given God the glory for his successes, and there was little doubt that in what must have been his most difficult moment in a football uniform, he found refuge and comfort in his faith in God.

Why ask the question, when you know the answer? McCoy seems to have found the answer to his “Why?” in God.

One of the traits that makes Colt McCoy such a good quarterback is his ability to move in the pocket. He has instincts that let him feel the pass rush, feel the direction the pressure’s coming from, and move enough to step away from it. And he does it all with his eyes downfield, watching for that split second when a receiver comes open and he can fire a pass to him. He’s always moving in the pocket, always shuffling his feet, always ready to step or run away from pressure.

But when the real-life pressure was on this week, he didn’t shuffle his feet. He didn’t run away from it. He took a breath and witnessed to the world that he was standing, still and solid, on the Rock.

The reporter didn’t know how to handle that. She quickly turned the interview to what she thought most of her audience cared more about: McCoy’s right arm. I’m guessing, though, that a good portion of the audience wanted to know more about Colt McCoy’s confidence and faith – even if they didn’t know they did. Because, if I was a betting man, I’d lay odds that there are a lot of people in our world right now who’d like a Rock to stand on.

McCoy wasn’t saying anything new, of course. David wasn’t either, when he called God his Rock in the psalm. God had called himself the Rock for his people, way back when he first gave them his Law while they wandered in the desert. To wandering people, unsure of their next move, or even their own survival, having a Rock sounds pretty good. A Rock who can give those who find refuge there rest and hope, a Rock who won’t be shaken, who’ll be a fortress in which those who trust in him find salvation. People want someone they can trust in at all times, and to whom they can pour out their hearts.

Maybe that’s why we forget, those of us who have just such a Rock – maybe we’re too comfortable. We’re used to things going well. We have homes and jobs and families and churches and friends that let us enjoy the illusion of self-sufficiency. We have strong right arms and know how to move away from pressure.

And then when something happens that shatters the illusion, we panic. “Why?” we ask, as if knowing why will help. We think we’ve lost everything, when we should be remembering that God is in control and that because of Jesus and his work of redemption, we have solid footing on the Rock, whatever may be spinning out of control around us.

Take it to the bank – there will come a day, sooner or later, when the events of your life will spin out of your control. You’ll be left feeling like you’re watching from the sidelines, helpless to call the shots or affect the outcome. When that happens, please remember that nothing has changed with your God. He’s still your Rock and Salvation, your Fortress and Refuge. Please remember that you can pour out your heart to him, and that you can trust him at all times. Especially when everything else fails.

And then remember to speak up about it. Because someone else needs to know your Rock.

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