Fountains in the Way

A year ago I would have been able to list off the ways that I knew God was good, and that was in the midst of the fire.

This year, in the aftermath of last year, a difficult pregnancy, birth and postpartum, I’m no longer in the fire, yet I find myself crying out to God for Him to show me his goodness.

Why am I like this? Why am I like the Israelites begging God to send them back to Egypt? God has done great things for me, but they aren’t sticking in my head or heart. I want to be ever present in the memories and reality of the good things God is always doing, but I am not. I whine and stumble, I shift and grumble my discontent. 

But I also repent. I’m asking God to show me how to be content, how to dig into the present.

And I realized something. Maybe the point of the Gospel is that despite the fact that we are still human, still imperfect, still failing, and grumbling, God wanted to be close to us, so he sent his son so that we would never be parted, never be separated. So we could come to him in our sin and shame and he would wipe us clean, not to go on sinning, but to show us His better way. And he’d keep showing us His better way, little by little, day by day, as we come back, broken, and wearied by a world that wasn’t supposed to be this way, but as struggling little beings that try to hard to fix things ourselves and blame God when it doesn’t work. He’s there, at the throne of grace ready to show us His better way.

I can’t fix myself, but God can.

Lord, show me your better way I pray.