Life’s a mess.

One minute you’re up, the wind on your face. You’ve been voted most likely to succeed. In cap and gown, you receive the diploma. You get the job, the promotion, the raise. You master that skill that’s been eluding you.

Your life’s love slips the ring on your finger. The baby’s a girl – and you can tell by the cry that she’s fine.

The person you least expected is giving you a compliment. You’re laughing with a friend. You’re cuddling with a child. You’re singing as you work. All’s well with the world.

The next minute, you’re down. You can still feel the wind, but now it hits against you, biting, cold. And the drop has come so suddenly you feel you’re going to lose your lunch. You flunked. You’re laid off. The other candidate got the job, the promotion, the raise.

Your fiancé wants to break the engagement. Your spouse wants a divorce. Your baby’s sick. Your teenager hurls stinging words to your face. Your “friends” say hurtful words behind your back.

Your car breaks down. Your washing machine breaks down. Your life breaks down. You’re tired. You’re sick. You’re angry. You’re depressed.

Then, you’re up again. The loan comes through. A new relationship buds. An encouraging letter or phone call arrives.

Up, then down, then jerked around

Life’s a mess.

One minute, you’re going a certain way. You have a plan. You have a dream. You’re sure the plan will get you to the dream.

The next minute, you’re jerked around 180 degrees. Without warning, you find yourself barreling at top speed away from what you hoped to accomplish, who you hoped to be.

You’re still single, though you intended to be married by now. You’re single again. You can’t get pregnant. Your baby changes your life in ways you hadn’t imagined.

You leave the workplace. You enter the workplace. You switch careers. You relocate.

Your youngest starts school. Your youngest leaves the nest. Now 20-something, your youngest moves back in. You become caregiver for a sick or aging relative.

And about the time you get oriented to each new course, your life takes off a different way. Up, then down, then jerked around, you’re frightened and more than a bit queasy. Like a roller coaster rider at a fair, you hear yourself scream …

What the singers cried

Long before you and I were born, the Old Testament poets rode life’s roller coaster. They faced as many ups and downs and hairpin turns as we. When barreling where they had not planned to go, they yelled too. It’s what they yelled that is so very interesting.

David wrote Psalm 131 as “A song of ascents.” Ratcheting upward on life’s roller coaster, he cried:

Put your hope in the Lord! (Ps. 131:3)

One of “the sons of Korah” wrote Psalm 42. At the time, he was emotionally in freefall. His psalm begins,

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food
day and night
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?” (Ps. 42:1-3)

Yet, plummeting downward, that poet cried:

Put your hope in God! (Ps. 42:5)

By hope, those ancient singers did not mean wishful thinking. They meant confident expectation. Each one urged us all – but himself first – to reach for the good hope that springs from looking toward and resting in the Lord.

At times, the psalmists laid hold of that hope. At times, even in chaos, they could declare,

I have calmed and quieted myself
I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content.” (Ps. 131:2)

Other times, even when they looked to God, they did not immediately find hope. Those times, they admitted as much.

My soul is downcast within me …

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God. (Ps. 42:6, 5)¹

The point of greatest strength

Still today, the God of those Old Testament singers remains sovereign, stable, good. Intimately present, he rides the roller coaster with all who know him. Ever faithful, he promises to make even the most crooked places straight, even the roughest places smooth.

In desperate times, it’s incredibly challenging to lay hold of that assurance. It’s incredibly rewarding when you do. Emotionally:

→ It feels wonderful to find yourself waiting in quiet hope and encouraging others to do the same.

→ It feels dreadful to seek the God you thought you knew while hope continues to hide. It feels like a betrayal on God’s part, or a failure on yours, or both.

Yet George Matheson, a Scottish minister who lived more than a century ago, offers a new perspective to our hurting, hope-deprived hearts. He wrote:

Waiting with hope is very difficult,
but true patience is expressed when we must even wait for hope.
I will have reached the point of greatest strength
once I have learned to wait for hope.²

You will yet praise him

Life’s a mess. When yours feels like a nightmare amusement-park ride that never ends, look to the one in whom hope lives: Rivet your gaze on the Lord your God. Complain to him. Appeal to him. Cling to him.

When any bit of hope rises up, allow it to calm and quiet your soul.

And if hope doesn’t appear? If it delays so long you think it will never come? Then, dear one, do not bail on God. And do not beat yourself up.

You will yet praise him.

In the meantime, embrace the strength you do not know you have – and wait for hope.

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This post interweaves two other short pieces I’ve written: A newspaper column, published in 1996, and titled, “Ride the Roller Coaster (without losing your lunch).” A blog post published January 21, 2017, and titled, “Waiting for Hope.” I retired that post to publish this one.

Photo courtesy Ryan DeLaney

See also

• It is God who has wronged me
• When waiting is writhing and silence groans
• Looking up
• A future filled with hope
• Smiling into the unknown when times are tough

Footnotes

1. The psalmist repeats the same questions and answers in Psalms 42:11 and 43:5. ↩︎
2. George Matheson, quoted in Jesus Today, by Sarah Young (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2013), 14. ↩︎