Mysteries

Written by William Cowper, an 18th century American who struggled most of his life with major depression, doubts and fears.

God Moves in Mysterious Ways

God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence,
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.

Predictable buffalos

Saturday night I was downtown with some friends/new people that I had never met before. A few of the people in the group were from out of town, and so we decided to walk around our downtown area showing the "scenic" views of downtown. One of the greatest features of our downtown is not the skyline, or the beautiful riverwalk, or even the beautiful Bricktown area, but rather these lovely metal/tin statues of buffalos that are liberally "sprinkled" around the area. Yes, welcome to Oklahoma. We have tin buffalos in our capital city.

Anyways, one of the visiting girls sees one of those tin buffalos, and she goes running up to it and is playing around and posing for a picture. Suddenly, we hear this deep voice coming through loudspeakers, and he just says one line "That's very predictable."
We all burst out laughing when we realized he is referring to this girl posing with the buffalo, and even funnier was when we realized who was talking to us. It was a cop! He was sitting in his squad car off to the side and we hadn’t noticed him, but I guess he had been watching people take pictures with that buffalo all night and was getting pretty bored with it all.

We decided we better move on rather quickly since the cop was obviously watching our every move, but we laughed at the absurdity of it for quite a while.

Disappointed hope

My friend said it best... 'It's not so much that I'm disappointed in the situation as much as I am disappointed in the hope of there being that situation.'

For anyone who has ever wanted something to occur, or waited for a possibility to become reality, or stayed up late anticipating what might happen when you wake up the next morning, then you know, that perhaps what hurts worse than the loss of that reality or actual event is the loss of the dream. When you no longer have a reason to think ahead and smile, when you no longer have a reason to impatiently wait for that special possibility- that just might become reality, or when you realize that no matter how special that hope was, it was in fact a false hope, that is when the pain hurts most deeply.

So much, if not all, of our lives revolve around hope. We hope for good days at work, or at least a better day tomorrow than there was today, we expect (hope) for fun-filled weekends, we anticipate our life goals being accomplished, we hope for dreams to be fulfilled.

What do we do when those hopes return empty? When possibilities can't become reality and expectations become disappointments?

I know at this point I should start quoting verses about my eternal hope in the Lord, which, I do believe with all my heart. But sometimes, rather than needing words of affirmation, I think I just need solace through silence. For in the silence, I know He understands. He cries. He listens. He waits.

And ultimately, one day He will move- eventually renewing my hopes and granting me new dreams.
But for right now...........
He just sits with me and lets me mourn the disappointing loss of a dream.