A Rock is Still a Rock, After All

    I found out yesterday that our son-in-law's three year old nephew, for whom we have been praying the past few months, is now on hospice. His neuroblastoma was stage four when he was diagnosed. The outlook was very poor. But I realized when I heard he is dying, that all those months I have been praying for Rustin, I never really hoped for anything better. I think one of the casualties of losing so many Lambs in the past few months is my feeling of hope. My faith in God is intact, my hope for a future in heaven is brighter than ever, but my hope that prayer changes things in this world is wounded. I realize one of the purposes of prayer is to line me up with God's will, and that will is too vast for me to comprehend, but right now a three year old is dying of cancer and it seems like the prayers were just to make me feel good about having done something. A show of support for the family. A participant ribbon for those of us who prayed.

     Normally God's sovereignty is a comfort to me in a world where our culture and government runs headlong toward sin, but when God's sovereign plan is death of people I care about, sovereignty is more painful than comforting. That is what this poem is trying to say. As an optimist I am by nature hopeful, and I know that this is a snapshot of my spiritual life, not the full length movie. Hope will return, but right now this is how I feel . . .

 

 

 A Rock is Still a Rock, After All

 

There are times the sovereignty of God

holds me safe and secure,

rocks me like a swaddled babe.

And there are times His sovereignty

confuses and confines me,

like I'm trapped in a grave.

Same God, same sovereignty, 

different circumstances. 

Sovereignty is the rock I cling to

lest life's waves tear me away.

But when God's path for me is tragedy

 He had power to prevent,

but allowed to come my way,

sovereignty is the rock I slam into.

 

And the pain of that shakes me.

A Rock is still a rock, after all.

1/27/23