How Long?

This year has felt like a dearth of creativity. I’ve just not been writing, and that makes me very sad. Writing has been my creative outlet for so long, but I just can’t seem to muster up any coherent thoughts lately.

I blame Covid.

Can’t we blame Covid for so much that has gone wrong in our lives lately? Sickness, for sure, and I truly am sorry if you or your family has had to deal with the lasting effects of this pandemic.

Grief, as people have lost loved ones. As healthcare workers have had to process all that they have seen. As our way of life is interrupted going on almost two years now.

But also, disappointments, like the ones I’ve had to process as I’ve tried to get my business off the ground while canceling trip after trip. Most recently, I had to cancel our Walkabout trip to London, which I should be leading as I write this. Instead, I’m sitting in my bedroom at home in my writing chair, wishing I hadn’t had to disappoint the women who were so looking forward to the trip. Myself most of all.

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post.

As I was saying, my creativity feels like it’s been sapped over the past 18 months. I haven’t felt like writing much at all; the writing I have done has been in my private journals. And most of that has been processing what I’ve been reading in the Bible. I’ve found that I really love that kind of writing—the reflective journaling about God’s word.

This week I started reading the book of Judges, and in the second chapter, God gives the Israelites judges to help settle disputes between them and their enemies. These judges aren’t harsh rulers who impose unfair laws—at least that’s not how they were intended.

See, the Israelites were a whiney, complaining people. Always had been. They were constantly messing things up, then calling on God to get them out of their messes. And God knew this about them, so he gave them judges as a grace to them, another way to help them out of the messes that God knew they’d get themselves into.

Judges 2:16 says, “Then the LORD raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them.” The Bible says, just a couple of verses later, “For the LORD was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them.”

The judges were sent to SAVE the people, but the Israelites wouldn’t listen to the judges. In fact, the Bible says that they were “more corrupt than their fathers.” A good and gracious God sent them a gift, yet God’s people wouldn’t recognize it as a grace. They just kept doing things their own way, then calling out to God to rescue them when things got bad again.

I bet that made God mad. I mean, here he is giving them a gift, a rescue a way out against their enemies. If they would only listen!

I imagine God thinking, “I gave them judges for their benefit, to help them, and this is how they repay me? I had pity on them because they were in trouble, and they are still hard-hearted? How long will I keep showering my patience on these people?”

Sometimes I wonder if even today we refuse to see God’s gifts because of our own stubbornness and hard-heartedness. I wonder if we sit on our Christian pedestals, thinking we know all the answers about everything, yet refusing to look at God’s perfect provision sitting right in front of us.

I wonder sometimes if God has ever thrown me a lifeline saying, “Here! Take this! I’m sending it to help you!” when I was looking in the wrong direction, refusing to even see the rescue as just that, a rescue. A way to LIVE.

Things for the Israelites got pretty bad because they kept rejecting the gift God had offered to them. I wonder how bad things need to get before I open my eyes to the rescue right in front of me.