God's promises

Today at staff prayers we reflected on God's promises. We thought and prayed about what promises we had felt God had given to us and kept, and what promises we were still waiting on.

Reflecting on all this made me realise that I don't think God has ever made any specific personal promises to me. Like "you will have a child", "this guy is the one", or "you will have this job". In honesty, I felt a bit weird confessing that to my colleagues. The presupposition was that we would have promises that God had made to us about our lives. And I didn't have this kind of personal promise. Awkward.

Maybe God has made personal promises to me and I just never realised because I'm sceptical, cautious, and constantly miss God's still small voice. I suppose when I have heard him speak softly to me in the noise of life, it has generally been in words and promises from Scripture. "I will never leave you or forsake you". "Your body is the temple of the living God." Many words of comfort and challenge. When it comes to promises God has made to me, those are what I think of.

What really struck me is that God has kept all those promises to me. He has done what he said he would. He has never left and will never leave me defenceless with more than I can bear. He has taken care of me through amazing people around me. He has given me hope and a life full of purpose. He loves me. Those scriptural, communal and deeply personal promises have all been fulfilled. I realise this looking back on my life and my journey, even though I haven't been able to see this in the moment. Life can only be understood backwards, Kierkegaard said. It's very true. I always felt that God had abandoned me during times of great illness and pain. But he got me through in the end. I'm still here, and so is he. I am a little bruised and battered, and so is my faith. But we're still here.

Sometimes it takes a little hindsight and reflection to be grateful and to see God's love and faithfulness. Not in loud lightning bolts, grand gestures and staggering miracles. But in small movements, increasing steps towards recovery, stability, and wholeness. That is how I feel when I think of God and look at my life. When I think of all the tears and screams that God has worked with me through, the scars that remain. The things I feel now which I thought would be impossible when I was a teenager, alone and suffering. It was hard to understand God's ways then. It's still hard.

I suppose I feel a sense of awe and silence about God that I didn't used to feel so much. A sense of his magnitude and mystery.  Of his gentle touch. We ask for God to do things for us, to act in violent and dismissive ways sometimes. To fix and patch up things that we can't help but break. I throw my questions at him like bullets.

I think we yearn for significance. We want to know that we matter, and often God doesn't seem enough to fill that need. We want to feel important, to know God's plan for us individually, to know we have a stake in it. We want signs and healing and miracles, we want personal prophecies and clearly proclaimed words. We want to feel that we stand out as special individuals for God.

But maybe for some of us, God is just there. Like the wind. He is just the everlasting presence, always faithful, always waiting. Always constant.

Maybe we don't need to ask for more than that.

I am grateful for God's promises, even if he has never promised me anything specifically. It is enough for me that he says our lives have purpose, they are redeemed, and we have a job to do. It is enough that he says he will never give up on us. Maybe I haven't experienced true intimacy with God. Maybe the core of me still needs to be opened up and moved, so that I can hear him in the way so many others seem to.

For now though, in this moment, this is enough for me.