veritas: one woman’s journey

This world can be cruel. Hard. Disappointing. And yet still hopeful. Hopeful only because Jesus is Lord and rose from the grave, giving us the assurance of eternity.

Last year, a young woman sat on a couch and sobbed as one relationship came to an end, not knowing six months later, it’d be de javu all over again.

Sometimes we glimpse God’s sovereignty through our own hazy view, and yet the pain remains. Start. Stop. Come. Go. We go through life, attempting to make sense of it all - attempting to ascribe purpose to our lives, to our disappointments, to our pain.

But sometimes we can’t. And that is where faith comes in. The great theologians remind us that faith is the “substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen.” We can read it for ourselves in the Old Testament. But what does that really mean in the here and now?

It’s not some psychological or emotional crutch - this “faith” we cling to. It has form and substance, resulting in an empty tomb on Easter Sunday, reminding us that God is in control when all else seems dark and void.

It is what allows a woman who is swept away by a man who displays great love and integrity to put back her life when he ends their relationship. A man broken by war. A love torn apart.

We trust in God’s sovereignty; sometimes kicking and screaming, and yet, we still trust.

We must go on. Making sense of the heartache is not always possible. And yet we continually try. Why? Because we’ve been wired for eternity. We intrinsically understand that this is not how it was supposed to be.

We know that a young woman is not supposed to lose the man who asked her to be his wife; she is not supposed to bury her father when she is nineteen; she is not supposed to be the causality of a big corporation.

We understand, however feebly, that this was not what God intended for His creation, but in His sovereignty, He uses it, allows it, and shapes and molds us through it as we walk through our valleys.

Personally, I’m learning to embrace the pain, for it’s in my weakness that I know God most intimately, and it’s through the valleys that I remember what my Lord and Savior went through on the cross.

And as we approach Good Friday, we are reminded that there is sorrow before Resurrection Sunday - so rejoice! For faith reminds us that the joy comes tomorrow.

-Christen Patterson
March 2007