Faith

I want to write this now, before I know.

I grew up hearing in Sunday School that I was supposed to trust God. We sang hymns ... 'Trust and Obey, Trust and Obey, Because there's No other Way, To be Happy in Jesus, But to Trust and Obey.' Sounds fine, but later I discovered the dark side of this. Job saying: 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.' The three famous Hebrew exiles, telling the Babylonian King as they are being pushed into the fire: 'The God we serve is able to save us, but even if He does not ...' Yet. But. Words to stretch a soul to the ripping point. My soul.

You see, the girl I love needs a visa to come to this country after we are married, and it's our dearest hope that she will get one, but not at all likely that the powers that be will grant it. Anyway, we have applied. Meanwhile I wait with those words needling my mind ... yet, but.

I have tried to be deceitful, to be tricky, to be sneaky, but my God, my conscience and my girl have held me back. I have tried at every turn to play my own hand in this business, to skew the outcome in our favour. Two weeks ago I lay awake in the middle of the night, jet-lagged and tossing on the lumpy cushions of a friend's couch, taking my insomnia as an opportunity to argue with God. But, I said, if I tell them THAT in the application, they'll be sure not to give it to us. And God reminded me - I don't often say things like that, as if God speaks to me, but here I will dare - God reminded me of the story of Gideon. Gideon the Scared, picked to lead an oppressed nation against their oppressors, who were, the story goes, as numerous as the sand on the shore. And as he went, the LORD kept telling him to send away more and more of his men, until he had 300, which, militarily and every other way, was a laughable number. Like our visa application, with its crippling honesty, is laughable. 'Lest,' God said, 'Isreal vaunt themselves against me saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.'

So I want to say this now, on the eve of the news that will come today or tomorrow telling whether we get our visa or we don't: That we, if it comes, will not be boasting that our own luck or cleverness has done it. Nor, if our ending is less happy than Gideon's, or Job's, or the Hebrews in the furnace, will we be saying that God is against us. What we will say, someone else has already said better, so let me just write down the old words of the obscure prophet Habbukuk:

Though the fig tree does not
bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the
pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my saviour.

That word 'yet' is the strongest word I have ever known, and now it pulls my soul like rubber into a thin, see-through piece of hope. And it is no guarantee, and Aslan is not a tame lion, so it must be stronger even than disappointment. But I must have it, for if that word does not stand, there is nothing in me, and there is nothing left in the world.