People often think of men and women in the bible as somehow being some kind of supernatural beings. We can think of them as being stronger, wiser, as if they just had it more together than we do. Like, a burning bush is all in a day’s journey, or cutting off a giant’s head routine. Nope, these were men and women like you and me.
It reminds me of social media, how we get a couple pieces of a person’s life and suppose that is the sum of the way it is. God gives us pieces of these lives, kind of like he gives us pieces to the direction we are to go. Sometimes the pieces are bigger, sometimes smaller. In between, a lot of trust has to occur…and/or be built.
I can look at all my inadequacies and compare them to the trajectory of where I think God is leading and just feel, ‘no way’. Like, there is no way that this square peg is going to fit in that round hole. There are times that I think…is there a way that I won’t screw this up? Then, I look back over the course of my life, at all the things that God brought me through, and I stand amazed.
A couple years ago, God told me to write and tell the story of my life. Of course I heard this with excitement. I didn’t, couldn’t, realize the process that would lie ahead. I expected to jump right in and just spit this stuff out. After all, I had lived it, right? That’s not the way it went. To tell the story of healing and redemption, I’ve had to go through more healing, to bring it out untainted.
I can’t help wondering about the process that Moses, Joseph, and David went through in between times. I wonder about the details of the time after Moses killed a man to the burning bush. I’m curious about his being ‘slow of speech’. What went through Joseph’s mind in all his ordeals? What additional trauma did he encounter? What happened in David’s family, that his dad didn’t even think of him when Samuel came to anoint the future King of Israel? In one of his Psalms we read and relate:
Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. (Ps.27:10)
We have many pieces to David’s life, but also many holes, both before and after he becomes king. Still, we know that even though David had failures, that the plan of God was fulfilled in his lifetime. (Acts 13:36) What does this say about the grace of God towards mortal men (that is you and me)? What does this say is available to us today?
These were real men, just like you and me. Their hearts were set apart as holy to the Lord, but the trials were great at times. And so were their failures. They were not super human, or immune to weakness. Yet, look what God did through them.
Moses’ story, Joseph’s story, David’s story, they are all God’s story. It is God showing what he can do through a mortal and submitted human being. The same Christ that overcame death, hell, sin, and the grave through the cross, can and will overcome every obstacle to his story being made know in us. Keep pressing in, the tide will turn. We are no different those men of long ago. The very same God that made himself known in them, will do the same in us.
Painting: I painted this, Melancholy, in 2016, while I was in college. It was painted in the hurt and ache I felt about my childhood. It is now about overcoming that pain, because God has healed those wounds. I no longer feel sorrow, but awe when I look at it.
Melicia Evans 