Days like these call for faith

Prelude: Last week Ethan was away on a wilderness trip with our students, and by the end of the week I just felt limp emotionally. Feeling low, unmotivated, and looking forward to bedtime - let this day be done already! However, we had a happy reunion yesterday, and it knocked the edge off of my sadness. This morning I woke up with thoughts swirling, and decided to catch them before they drifted away…

Days like these call for faith.

It’s easy to believe God loves the busy, the bountiful, the beautiful, the worker bees who end every day with a set of accomplishments in hand. Check!

It’s much harder to believe God loves the broken down, the down and out, the ones who failed - yet again, the ones who arrive at days end with an empty basket in tow, nothing to show for the day's labor.

I breathed. I lived another day. 

I took up space and feel regret for existing. And yet God looks at me, discouraged and disheartened and says I love you as much as you can be loved. Because miraculously, his love doesn’t adjust to reflect my performance for the day. It doesn’t go up or down according to my productivity or usefulness. It flatlines, not in a dead sort of way, but in an overabundant high-in-the-sky way. His love is beyond my ability to earn it. 

My worth doesn’t fluctuate from day to day, it was established at the cross. God has established my worth as THAT OF A GOD. My mind rejects the notion and refuses to believe - but there it is, written in red  

thorns on his head, 

nails driven through just to prove his love is matchless, and my worth is non-negotiable.

I cannot compete with this God. You win. You love more.

So I will do my meager part: the believing. 

The trusting in your goodness and unfailing character.

I will settle myself in the soil of your extravagant love. I will be like a tree nestled by a stream that never fails, with eager roots that burrow deeper down, down into the knowledge that you are always good and I am forever loved.

I will believe what you say. 

Help me to have faith - the kind that moves mountains, the kind that lets me see my end as you do, and empowers me to live it out.