This week, some voices predicted the rapture. As with every generation before us, the day came and went. For millennia, Christians have been looking to the horizon, watching for Christ’s return. That hope is part of our faith story, and someday this world as we know it will end for us. But if we’re honest, the harder moments are not the cosmic ones, they are the personal ones.

We all know what it feels like to cry out for God to help us and end up with a, “But Jesus didn’t come” feeling instead.
When the diagnosis doesn’t change.
When the job never calls back.
When the grief lingers longer than anyone else can understand.
When the last straw descends.

In those moments, it’s easy to wonder if God has forgotten us.

Yet the story of scripture reminds us again and again that God is faithful in ways we don’t always see at first. Joseph, sold into slavery, must have wondered if God had forgotten him, yet his suffering became the path to saving his people. The Israelites cried out under the weight of Egypt’s oppression for generations before their deliverance came. The psalmists poured out their laments, voicing the same ache we feel in the thunderous silence of the heavens.

The resurrection itself looked like abandonment on Friday and Saturday, when all seemed lost and the tomb was sealed. But Sunday was on the way.

The pattern of loss, waiting, then unexpected life breaking forth is written throughout our faith story. It reminds us that God’s timing is rarely ours, and that silence is not abandonment, though it is profoundly frustrating.

I find myself looking to the fields of corn and soybeans around me in Central Illinois. Seeds are planted well before life is visible. Frozen, impenetrable ground gives way to softness. Life pokes through. There's a time for every season, and every season comes in its time.

If you feel stuck like the frozen and impenetrable ground in January - life will break through again. If you feel like the harvest is the end of the story, hang on. Spring holds a surprise.

Wherever there is despair, God will bring hope. Wherever there is brokenness, God will offer healing. And wherever there is death, God brings resurrection.

Faith doesn’t erase the seasons of waiting and longing, faith steadies us throughout. It anchors us to hope that's deeper than our feelings, gives us sight beyond our vision, and moves us forward when we don't feel we can move.

My wish for you this week, Reader, is that when you find yourself in a season of silence or waiting, you will remember that it's not the end of the story. Life begins before we can see it. Seeds sprout when we're not watching. Trust what God is working in you, and may hope grow from the roots of your longing. That's the fiLLLed life.

Live a fiLLLed life, Melissa ​