Mountains Unmovable

I’ve been listening to the song for two years now, singing sometimes through tears, sometimes through gritted teeth: even if You don’t, my hope is You alone. Trying hard to outrun the moment when that “if” would become “though”. I heard the song with new ears the other day, ears the other side of “if”. No tears. No gritted teeth. It sounded like an echo, like a story I used to tell myself on dark and scary nights, only there’s been one too many of those nights and I’ve been needing a new lullaby for a while now.

I know good and well He can move any mountain He pleases. I also know some mountains just flat aren’t going to move. It isn’t always a question of whether faith has sufficiently intervened. I have seen faith swell to tsunami heights while the mountain digs in hard, refusing to be anything but impenetrable stone. Sometimes it’s as simple as that: the mountain has a say and it says no.

In the end, some stories are just that: stories. No matter how beautifully the seed began to grow, no matter how many of the faithful stopped to water it, no matter how much hope it inspired or the magnitude of promise we saw in its eventual blooming, sometimes the weeds prove too plentiful, too powerful, and the seed shrinks and shrivels back into itself.

Sometimes we do the labor of two and all we have to show for our efforts are half a day’s wages and a bucket full of questions that weigh us down like so many stones we refused to leave unturned along the way.

In those moments, do we accuse Him of leaving mountains unmovable?

Well yes. Actually we do. Lord, we are tiresome creatures. But who can blame us? After all, I know that He can move the mountain – any mountain. I can’t un-know this about Him. So when I’m left holding the pieces of not one but two broken hearts, tell me how I can ignore His ability to have prevented the shattering?

Tell me how I am to put on a brave face and speak of His faithfulness without first wrestling with Him over these grievous wounds? Without first wrestling until He makes me see whatever it is I’m missing in this whole messy story so I can finally get up, wash my face and move forward?

I’ve no stomach for pithy platitudes. Don’t send me your brush-lettered inspirational quotes. Don’t even send me a psalm right now. My language is music yet there isn’t a hymn under the sun that will comfort me because what I need is not comfort. I don’t need to feel better. I already feel better. What I need is understanding. What I need is to know where He is in all of this.

And so I wrestle. I wrestle in the hopes that He will leave me with the same thing He gave Job: sight. I wrestle for the moment I will be able to say: …but now my eyes have seen You. I wrestle so He will make me see.

After all, I know He can.