All right, so. There are moments in our lives—actual moments, not just the big dramatic ones we tell stories about for years—where we just need to get on our knees. Not because we’re supposed to. Not because it’s Sunday morning and there’s a liturgy that says so. But because the path has gone dark and we can’t see the next step.
I’m thinking about the times when circumstances used to make perfect sense to us. You know that feeling, right? When you could see the logic, you could understand what God was doing, you could trace the shape of it. And then something shifts. The clouds come in, the rain starts falling, and we’re tempted to believe that God doesn’t actually know what’s happening. That we’ve somehow slipped through the cracks of God’s attention.
That’s when you bow the knee. Not because you’ve figured it out. But because trust isn’t about understanding. It’s about what you do when you don’t understand. And the marvelous thing—and I mean marvelous—is that wherever you are at that moment, that’s exactly where God finds you. That’s where God meets you. With an offer of peace that cuts across all the ways you’ve been taught to think, all the personality types in the room, all the questions you haven’t figured out yet. God shows up anyway.
One of the things that keeps me from despair is that scripture keeps coming back to this. The psalmists write their anger, their doubts, their hollering at God. And then somewhere in the middle of all that fussing, there’s this turning point. But God. Just like that. And they find themselves held.
A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope