One year later

On this very day last year, July 26th 2016, I was discharged from the hospital after 18 days. I was quite weak and enervated, but the entire trip back, I could not sleep a wink. I was praising the Lord and singing songs, as I was very sure that all my troubles and trials were over, that the things that the Lord has promised me were going to be fulfilled right away. Now, it has been one year and only recently my health has improved; even then, the humiliating circumstances I had to endure along with intense pain for weeks, this had to be one of the toughest years I had faced in my life.

On the other hand, this year also taught me more about my shortcomings than all the years I had lived so far. Sometimes, it has made me feel so ashamed to stand in the presence of God; at other times, it made me realize how great is His grace for us.

Though there were forward movement in my spiritual life, there is no movement in my life in other realms. It had become an epitome of “Be still” as my life has come to a stand still.

So this morning, when I woke up, I had mixed feelings. I am very grateful that the Lord has saved my life and for the last one year, through so many downs, He has lifted me up, taught me some very valuable insight about myself (though not so pleasant), and above everything, He filled me with His love. But since nothing has happened to my career, I was quite confused. And then the Lord, in His great wisdom, gave me this meditation, which has cheered me up. And, I am hoping that this meditation be a blessing unto another soul who has the same questions like I had. May the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ alone be exalted; and praises to God our Father Who loves us more than we can ever understand. The meditation is given below:

“For we through the Spirit by faith, wait for the hope of righteousness”
– Galatians 5:5. (RV)

There are times when things look very dark to me, so dark that I have to wait even for hope. It is bad enough to wait in hope. A long-deferred fulfilment carries its own pain, but to wait for hope, to see no glimmer of a prospect and yet refuse to despair; to have nothing but night before the casement and yet to keep the casement open for possible stars; to have a vacant place in my heart and yet to allow that place to be filled by no inferior presence – that is the grandest patience in the universe. It is Job in the tempest; it is Abraham on the road to Moriah; it is Moses in the desert of Midian; it is the Son of Man in the Garden of Gethsemane.

There is no patience so hard as that which endures, “as seeing Him Who is invisible”; it is the waiting for hope.

Thou hast made waiting beautiful; Thou has made patience divine. Thou hast taught us that the Father’s will may be received just because it is His will. Thou hast revealed to us that a soul may see nothing but sorrow in the cup and yet may refuse to let it go, convinced that the eye of the Father sees further than its own.

Give me this Divine power of Thine, the power of Gethsemane. Give me the power to wait for hope itself, to look out from the casement where there are no stars. Give me the power, when the very joy that was set before me is gone, to stand unconquered amid the night, and say, “To the eye of my Father it is perhaps shining still.” I shall reach the climax of strength when I have learned to wait for hope. – George Matheson