November is breathing her last and I want to try and figure out how to prolong these dark autumn days just a little longer.
I don't know where these days have gone.
I prepare the candles for advent and our home for Christmas and their excitement is building, but I just want to be back at the beginning of the cooling-down days of Fall; to hold on to the burning fire of fading leaves for just a few more moments before each memory made swirls on the blowing wind of time ticking fast.
I look back on this year and it has been beautiful and hard and the newborn haze has quickly been replaced with pre-toddler motion and my hands feel so empty and full all at the same time.
And I have been Sarai, the one who dreams of a dream fulfilled and always the answer seems to be no, not yet.
The waiting of it aches.
And I have been her, the woman who sees the potential in other places and demands that that is where it will be made right.
But it isn't.
It never is.
Only Jesus is Savior and anything else crumbles under the weight of rushed ambition.
I have been Hagar, not empty but desperate and wandering, searching and not sure where to go next in a place void of all answers.
I have been both.
The angel of the Lord? He found Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.
Her flight was taking her in the direction of Egypt.
She was heading back home.
She was moving towards the familiar. Where else could she go?
It feels that way, sometimes. When what I have planned for falls through and when what I am doing hurts and feels awkward and heavy. Why not just throw it all off and go back to what I know, what feels familiar and right and doesn't require too much of a change?
Hagar was heading back home, but she was also staying near a spring of water. She was staying near a source of life.
And it was here that the angel of the Lord stopped her, he met her, he called her by name.
She wasn't forgotten in the promise of another. She may have been discarded by the ones over her, but she was still treasured by the One Who formed her. Their eyes may have looked away as she started over that dusty plain, but His Eyes never, never left her.
He told her to go back. Back to shame and humiliation and what would be hard. He asked her to walk that path back and to submit to a woman who would despise her.
But she would go back with a promise.
And she would go back knowing that God Himself saw her.
The years and the days may whirl by in a dizzying speed,
my heart may ache at all that is changing and moving and these hands may cup small ones close because tomorrow, they won't be so small.
But as the seasons change and calendar pages are flipped and as we enter into a season of Advent and Christmas, I can know,
always,
God sees me.
I am known.
And the One Who Sees is the One Who Provides and He will cover my days until He welcomes me home.
I can trust this.
I can trust Him.
Adoring:
Father God, You have given this day and You gave all the ones before and You hold me in the questioning and You see me in my wandering; You cover me and You know all that tomorrow holds. Like Hagar, help me to know You as the One Who sees, and like Sarai, let me know You as the God Who sustains in the waiting.
And as November fades in the quiet and crazy of Christmas, let my heart burn with a deep love that is unfading for You in the long nights that find me waiting for Your arrival.
I love you, Jesus. You are so good.
