Faith is easy.... sometimes!

“You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.’”
Malachi 3:14-15

Faith is really easy when everything is going for you rather than appearing to go against you. It's easy to praise God when you feel blessed and secure and certain about the future. It's not so easy when you don't. I wouldn't say that we're in the difficult phase, neither of us feel any great sense of turmoil or distance from God. On the other hand, we would like a few answers to a few questions like what is happening with the house purchase, will it be done in time to get the necessary work completed on the house before we have to move out of our current home, what will I do for a job in May?

Somehow we have to learn to live in the in-between space of uncertainty without falling into the trap that Israel seems to have fallen into at the time of Malachi. It's so easy, when things are not going according to our grand plan, to wonder why we continue to serve God when he doesn't appear to be working for us. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe too often we set things in a context of my dreams, my aspirations, my ideal scenario, and not in the bigger picture of God's eternal plans and purposes. Of course it would be so much easier to that if we actually knew the details of the said eternal plan, but we don't. And we won't.

So how do we live in the in-between space? Honestly, I don't have a definitive answer for that one. I think it's a mixture of faith, realism, asking questions where they need to be asked and finding a balance between being proactive (for example, pestering the solicitor to find out what's happening) and some sort of prayerful reaction as we wait and trust.

But it's certainly not easy and I wish I could see the future and tell the story of the amazing things that God did when we stepped out in faith on our new adventure. Maybe next year I will a story to tell, or maybe I will still be waiting. I just keep reminding myself that it is always worth serving God not matter what the evidence might suggest. Maybe I need a poster that says: "Keep calm and stay faithful"!