Waiting, Hoping, Praying, Trying

My academic struggles have continued. I feel lost, ungrounded, and uncertain in what I know, in my ability to write and think, and in where I fit, not just in the academy but in the world. Toronto and ICS have brought real challenges. I've left a loving and encouraging community at King’s and the process of finding my footing again continues to be difficult. I admit to myself often the difficulty of this situation and I keep hoping that by such an admission I will then magically find my way to more stability. It hasn't worked out that way, though. I have to face the same difficulty again and again, day after day, week after week.

We’re reading Walter Brueggemann’s book “The Land” in Biblical Foundations. Commenting on Israel after the exile, Brueggemann writes about hope. “Here is the heart of the good news of the gospel:  things that seem hopeless need not stay as they are. Things that seem hopelessly lost, closed, and dead are the very region of God’s new action. The reversal of destiny is not some clever trick of human ingenuity, but it is the action of God himself when all human ingenuity has failed” (126).

I always feel as though I’m on the brink of really locking into this new pursuit of wisdom I’ve undertaken here in Toronto. The problem is that I feel kind of frozen before all the wisdom and knowledge that is in the brilliant minds of my classmates and professors, and that lines the pages of thousands upon thousands of books.

So, what does Brueggemann have to say to my situation of the experiences of groundlessness and uncertainty? Well, by his own standards, it’s not much. After all failed human attempts at knowledge and wisdom, it is only God that brings about anything substantial. So I can attempt to be patient and await God’s renewing word, maybe create the space for such a word to be spoken. I do this in silent meditative prayer. But perhaps my prayer could also take an assertive tone, like that of the psalmist.

The psalmists often quite bluntly tell God to defend them. I quickly found a psalm of complaint (The Message): “Harass these hecklers, God, punch these bullies in the nose. Grab a weapon, anything at hand; stand up for me! Get ready to throw the spear, aim the javelin, at the people who are out to get me. Reassure me; let me hear you say, ‘I’ll save you’” (35:1). The psalmist is sure that God has promised to protect and uphold them, and so they demand that God hold up his end of the bargain!

I don’t know if God has promised me anything. There may be New Testament promises to all believers. But I’m not sure if my relationship with God is such that I can assert myself like the psalmist does. Which, admittedly, is a lonely and discouraging thought.

I will continue waiting, hoping, praying, and trying to create silence and space in my life to hear God’s word. It might be that the academic pursuit is simply not where I should place my life’s energies. It’s discouraging to think that simply working hard at something doesn't necessarily mean you’ll succeed at it. But, I confess, there is pride at work in me which creates my unrest in the first place. I’m a typical human relying too much on human ingenuity.