Sometimes plodding...

There are days when life just flows smoothly. When I'm excited about God. When I can believe spring is coming. When I'm desiring so much more.

And there are days like the last few. Days where it seems to take everything I've got to just make the next step. Days that can only be described as plodding, and dutiful.

Where you sit down to read scripture because you know it's right to do so.

Where you work through the daily readings and prayers you've committed to doing - the regular devotional, and the added Lenten ones - just for the sake of maintaining a routine.

I have felt forgotten today. Aware of the ongoing changes around me, and wondering when the changes I've longed for - the healing I've longed for - will come.

I spent most of the day completely without the basic energy required to function in normal life. Flat on my back on my bed.

And yet, as I sat down to write this post, prepared to whine a bit, and feel sorry for myself. Prepared to talk about how Lent isn't worth it, and how I'm missing chocolate (though I have no appetite for anything today, least of all chocolate), and how crabby I am with God and people and life in general, I felt the prompting voice that I've come to recognize repeat a passage of scripture I memorized to win a contest as a child. Probably somewhere between 18 and 20 years ago, I committed much of the following passage to memory, though in a different version than what I'll share with you tonight. I've never regretted that. Because over and over, in difficult times, when I've felt so very alone in the midst of my struggles and sorrows, it has come back to me, and I've been encouraged in the understanding that we have a savior who understood sorrow and suffering more deeply than any other human being. I am coming to understand that truth about Jesus so much more deeply, so much differently, because of the way so much of my life has played out in this last season.

And it came to mind again tonight, speaking to my heart, giving encouragement and the tiniest bit of hope in the knowledge of not being alone. It came on the heels of a few unexpected and encouraging comments and emails from friends. And it reminded me of the sort of Savior who walks with me, reminded me that if he could walk such a painful journey, surely I too can walk out this difficult Lenten season. I won't quote all of it... just a few favorite bits, sans the verse number references. You can find the whole passage in Isaiah 53 (NLT).

He was despised and rejected -
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised and we did not care.
Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
It was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.
He was oppressed and treated harshly,
yet he never said a word.
Unjustly condemned,
he was led away.
No one cared that he died without descendants,
that his life was cut short in midstream.
When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish,
he will be satisfied.
And because of his experience,
my righteous servant will make it possible
for many to be counted righteous,
for he will bear all their sins.
I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier,
because he exposed himself to death.
He was counted among the rebels.
He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels.