when i'm weary

by Alanna

    A few weeks ago, I passed the 15th month mark of leaving South Africa. I also wrote a blog around that time, about staying up all night underneath the stars and watching the sun rise. I wrote that God makes all things new, and that His power and the fact that He is mindful of us, combine to make His love immense and His character trustworthy. I'm sorry that I never posted that blog, but some things are too near to my heart and that sun rise also brought back oceans of memories, dreams of pure hope. 

  Today I'm writing about something else, because it's all that's on my heart right now. I'm weary. I know that God is our strength, and maybe it should grieve me that with all the power of the Creator, I am still so weary I could just lay down on this ground and not get up again. It takes every bit of me to get out of bed in the morning, to continue fighting and surrendering these days. Things are painfully hard, and every time bad news comes and I feel like maybe its time to quit, it seems that God gives me some opposed encouragement to keep going. Sometimes I'm just tired of hoping and struggling to believe, even in the right things. As my dear twin reminded me, we have to hope and believe that God is good and will remain good no matter what the outcome of these circumstances in our lives. But still, we live and move in this world and God asks us to believe crazy things and sometimes to act upon them. Sometimes He entrusts other lives to us, and loving them is like having our heart walk around outside our body, oceans away. I feel worn thin, emotionally exhausted. I don't want this weariness to turn into bitterness in me. If it's all I can do, I would rather lay broken at the feet of Jesus than be far from Him. I've found some rest in these words.

"But I know it is not the sense of His presence,

it is the fact of His presence

that is our strength and stay.

And yet it is comforting when a mother 

makes some little sign or speaks some little world

to a child who does not see her. 

And when our Father deals so tenderly with us, 

then we are very humbly grateful 

and we store such memories in our heart. 

And when there is not any feeling we rest on 

His bare word, 

'Lo, I am with you always, all the days, 

and all day long,' 

and are content."

"Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker: 

"Ask Me about the things to come concerning My sons, 

and you shall commit to Me the works of My hands. 

It is I who made the earth, and created man upon it. 

I stretched out the heavens with My hands, 

and ordained all their host....

My purpose will be established, 

and I will accomplish all My good pleasure." 

"Has He said, and will He not do it? 

Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?"

"He gives strength to the weary."