There is a skylight in my bathroom that lets the moonlight in; but only in the fall and winter months. All summer long it hides from me, but a few weeks ago I saw it trailing its loving fingers across my tired face through the watches of the night. This is the third autumn/winter season that I have tracked the hours by the streak of moonlight falling across my bathroom floor. When I rise (yet again) to turn my attention away from much needed rest, and towards little people needs, I am not the only one awake. I am not alone.
When the moon peeked its face in my bathroom window a few weeks ago for the first time this season, I felt a little bitter. I didn’t want to see the moon—not at this hour anyways. I wanted this to be the winter that I slept until morning. I was fully okay with no longer marking the hours by the path the moon traveled across the floor of my master bathroom. I don’t want to need it to see by in the late watches of night or the wee hours of morning.
But here I am. And as the moon is shifting tides in step with the tilt of our planet and the change of the seasons—I am shifting too.
“You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.”
—Jeremiah 29:13 CSB
So few talk about how long the seeking takes. Or what shape the finding comes in. Or how the first answer you come to is not always the right one; nor is the second.
I used the think the testing of faith was like an exam—pass or fail. Suffer well, or you are out of the “good christians” club. I tried hard for years through a grin-and-bear-it spirituality dependent on my performance.
Then I thought it was all a useful sort of suffering. A path God had put me on for my good and his glory, even though it felt like the life was being sucked out of me. I had the comfort of believing that God was working for my good (which I do still believe) but it got really twisty when the blows kept coming and it felt like God was betraying me by causing really painful realities to befall me for some higher purpose I couldn’t possibly fathom. I asked for one thing, and got the complete opposite. It was excruciating.
Now, I’m wondering if the testing of my faith is not so much a matter of “trying to believe right,” but a gracious process whereby God shows me the gaps, the holes, the problems in what I am believing—so that what I am believing is as steady as the rock when the storm comes.
In this way, the difficulties are not asking me to “suffer well,” as if I could possibly fail this trial, but the difficulties caused by man’s careless free will, or just the ache of living in a world not yet totally redeemed, are being used by God as a gracious instrument to show me the flaws in my thinking. Or as he did most recently, to show me what I really, truly, believe.
Then, when my faith falls apart, I’m not failing. My faulty theologies are being lovingly dismantled by a God who is showing me still, where to find him.
Not here. Not there. Not this way—
This—this is the way. Walk in it.
The command is not burdensome when I realize the path I had been on is a roughly cut swathe through a bramble patch. The path he wants me on is narrow, and hard to find yes, but it is sun-dappled with cool shadows. I can hear the wind rustling, and there’s the sound of water just up ahead.
I don’t have to just “endure it right”—God wants to bring me along to seeing him rightly, believing of him rightly, so that I may worship him rightly and live in peace.
Peace.
That’s a word I have loved and hated. If you are here, I’m sure you have felt the same at various points in life. But as the snow falls down from those heavenly storehouse today to pile on everything left behind—the withered grass and flowers, the cars, the plastic tricycle shaped like a Harley—I think I’m starting to understand the shape of the thing.
“Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.”
—James 1:2-6 CSB
Most of the times I have read this verse, it grated on me. Most recently, when my own endurance ran out, I began to fear that there was no place for me in a faith that required so much and seemed to give so little. I could not paint a happy face on my devastating life experiences. And unlike many other seasons of my life, I couldn’t even imagine a path along which I might someday see the seeds of redemption sown. I have been so full of lack—did that make me immature?
But if this testing was a gentle probing—water falling on the rock to see where the seams lay and if it was strong enough to stand up to all that rainfall—perhaps my falling apart was not a sign of immaturity in the negative sense, so much as it was a kind uncovering of all the fissures and cracks that might cause my heart to tear open into the nothingness of despair. Tested—my faith grows, not because I have showed my dedication and willpower through trials, but because all that no longer serves this faith of mine has been washed out to sea. The cracks showed where stones that do not belong to this rock solid faith, were shoddily cobbled on with mortar. If they fall away, who would call that a tragedy? Would the rock be blamed for not holding on to what never belonged to it in the first place?
Perhaps I’ve cobbled a lot of stones that don’t belong onto this faith of mine: anything that promised me answers, some kind of certainty, or a measure of control. I have loved me some black and white moralism in a world that is proving to be more nuanced than I ever would have been comfortable with as a child.
I want to understand everything. I want to see how all the puzzle pieces fit together. I want to make life work for me and for the ones I love. I want to do the right thing. I want to know what that is. These aren’t necessarily bad desires, but wanting them more than I want to live a life with God has certainly caused me some problems.
Because right now, I’m working by moonlight. And God is showing me that it’s good to let the small light I’m given, be enough. The darkness isn’t scary when I’m not worried about controlling every outcome, or seeing the exact shape of everything. It can even be a place of restful mystery. The long nights I’m still walking through are places to meet with the God who is there even when the moonlight fades.
I came to none of these conclusions quickly or easily. I hope that much is clear. Faith is a journey, not simply a heavenly destination. And what I’m discovering is that God wants me to know him, and he is kind to pull every false certainty away from me if it leaves us finally standing face to face.
Maybe this will be the winter of much longed for sleep. Or maybe I’ll watch the moon chart the weeks, days, and hours with her unfalteringly kind gaze, and I’ll thank God that even when I’m in a season of lack—I can be at peace. The dark can be a restful place, even when you are awake, if you are able to surrender to the moment and the God who cares about it, and you more than you could possibly imagine.
And if the darkness has threatened to pull the foundations away from what you always thought was true—don’t be afraid to let it. Your faith is being tested, and it’s not a pass/fail. Don’t be afraid to let the storm and the tide wash away everything but the sure and steady rock.
**A note to my Paid Subscribers, thank you for hanging in there with me during this past month which has been a bit weird. I owe you guys one more paid post, so I’m planning to do two in November. Thank you once again for your support! You help make this writing work more sustainable for me and my family.**
This reminds me of the CS Lewis quote from “Mere Christianity”
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right, and stopping the leaks in the roof, and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably, and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to?
The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of– throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
Renovation is so messy. And yet we can trust the Builder has a good design.
Keep writing. There is no chefs kiss emoji, but if there was, I would use it here.