A different season...

Though I am not quite ready to tell the world of our story, this season has been different.

This season has been full of sorrow and tears -- a season of confusion, anger, hopelessness, doubt...

Cam and I have been taking a class at the seminary every Tuesday night. The class is on marriage and family counseling in the Church. This past Tuesday was the final night of class. Dr. Zink was humble, vulnerable, empowering, sensitive, and loving. Traits few men have even at his age of 60.

The class was on hope. A topic that I want to avoid like the plague right now. Not because I don't want hope, but because hope is hard in this season.

A few points
- Hope is not passive (though our culture piles plenty of that on our plates)
- Hope is active (huh?)
- Hope is rightly displayed in scripture (duh)
- Hope takes faith and trust, not in myself but in a good God of promises

And even now writing those words good God tears fill my eyes. Oh how I know this and how I want to feel this again -- it takes time.

You see as children of our God we hope actively by trusting and resting in faithful promises. We serve and love a God of promises. A God who has never broken those promises to a broken and unthankful people. A God who weeps beside us and says it was never supposed to be this way child. A God who is not passive as we tend to be, but is active in restoring our broken world.

So in this season I pray for hope, but not just passive hope. I pray for active hope. I pray for trust in a God who is trustworthy. I pray that I too would be like the many in scripture who hoped and waiting and trusted, because a seed of promise is growing. Growing takes time, growing takes nurture, growing take pruning -- that seed of promise will grow.