When Will the Help Come?

“I’m hoarse from calling for help,

Bleary-eyed from searching the sky for God.”

— PSALM 69:3 (Msg)

Times of despairing last so long that we are forgiven for contemplating how we might just simply give up. And many do. Many give up in the ultimate sense, just as we have all given up on important things far too prematurely. But just the same there are times when we can’t give up, no matter how much we want to. These times when we won’t give up, because, perhaps we have too much to lose, build our faith to hold on long enough to endure the next conquest; we only fight one conquest of time. That’s all there is. It’s called the day.

We need only survive the day, but the irony is, when the day is enough, in our desperation, we tend to take far too a long term view.

What truly helps us hold on when the answer from God seems delayed? It’s almost as if the final result we hope for is able to be lived without enough to let go of it. Fixating on it won’t bring it to us any faster or any more assuredly.

What we discuss here is the matter of irony.

When Faith Is Helped by Irony

What a benefit it is if we can manage to think of life as one giant irony. Better put, perhaps, is that we would imagine life comprising of a series of ironies, like upside down realities.

In such a way we would need to learn to let go of that thing that is most important to us, whilst learning also how to grapple with the things we hate.

We might learn to choose to leave behind our hearts desire in order to endure inwardly and wrestle with our pain. To wrestle with our pain is to enter into it patiently. And just as patiently we could consider how we are to leave the precious thing behind.

When we can imagine life as a requiem of irony we expect much less from life and we begin to notice much more of a natural blessing in the present day.

What we’re really doing is giving ourselves plenty of breathing space, and we need such space when we consider our realities of being completely disoriented. Moving into a period of reorientation we know we need space, so we allow ourselves every opportunity at that space.

Space is what we need, not more pressure.

***

When we have to wait for the help of God to arrive our faith is built stronger, but only if we don’t give up. Relaxing in the despairing time is helped by temporarily letting go our heart’s desire, so we can experience sufficient poise, peace and perspective to endure. We relax our grip and find the help comes almost immediately.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.