For the last several weeks I have been under doctor’s orders to rest, to be off my feet, and to do no lifting while awaiting some necessary surgery. In other words, to be a complete slacker! It is the antithesis of what my life has been for the last several years, and it came at a most inappropriate, senseless time, in my opinion. I work with my husband in ministry, and my being taken ‘off-line’ made us very short-staffed. What was God, in his sovereignty, doing?

It is during times like this that my natural commonsense approach to life wants to be satisfied with knowing the immediate purpose of the circumstance. I can tolerate it if it makes some kind of sense to me. Trouble is, sometimes it just doesn’t happen, especially in the thick of the thing. Then what?

“For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” Isaiah 30:15.

This verse comes within a long passage in which God is telling Israel what a rebellious people they are, insisting on their own way. Trying to be the potter rather than the pot. There were many warnings, then in the middle of this he says: return, rest, and you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.

That has become my modus operandi for these weeks. I do not want to waste them. Quietness and trust. Having a still heart, trusting in God’s sovereign work for our good and for his glory. For my dear husband who bears a heavier load in ministry and also at home. For all the ministry issues that are still unsettled. For the weeks of recovery ahead. Though things don’t make sense to me, I am still commanded to return, to stake everything on the eternal sovereign God, to rest in him, then to be quiet and trust.

There have already been personal benefits. I am thankful for copious amounts of time for reading and thinking and praying. I’m thankful for much-needed sleep and physical rest.
I’ve discovered a wealth of wonderful sermons and other resources online that I heretofore had little time to read. Many thanks to John Piper, http://desiringGod.org/, and other great websites for making so many resources available!

The greatest benefit is more deeply learning to be quiet and to trust God. In Henry Scougal’s book, “The Works of Henry Scougal,” he writes,” Indeed, a modest and unaffected silence is a good way to express our submission to the hand of God under afflictions,” and “There is nothing more acceptable unto God, no object more lovely and amiable in His eyes, than a soul thus prostrated before Him, thus entirely resigned unto His holy will, thus quietly submitting to His most severe dispensations.” I underlined those sentences when I read the book two years ago, and they mean even more now.

So I will wait and trust and…blog. If all this circumstance serves to make me “lovely and amiable in His eyes,” I am happy indeed.