We Had Hoped

Summary

Lauren Winner entered what she calls the middle of her spiritual life when a couple of things happened: her mother died and she got married, but it was not a happy marriage. (Quote). Where Lauren used to have faith, she now found herself staring at what she calls a blank wall.

Some of us know blank walls. Or at least times when it seemed that God wasn’t present or that our faith wasn’t what we expected. Maybe we came to this experience in a dramatic way like Lauren, through life-changing events that took the rug out from under us. Or maybe in a quieter way- a lifetime of churchgoing that no longer has the spark, a growing sense of disinterest, a loss of the certainty you used to feel. Maybe it comes from disorientation over a world in turmoil and seemingly no help on the way.

It’s been one week since Easter and we’ve already gone to the tomb with the women and seen the stone rolled away. We have sung “up from the grave he arose” and proclaimed Christ has risen indeed! Many of us have had times when we have been so sure of our faith, and I wonder if that’s part of what makes a blank wall so painful, so disorienting. When we have felt God’s presence in tangible ways; but then we don’t. When certainty is replaced with doubt. Presence replaced with absence. A God we thought we knew, replaced by a God we don’t even recognize.