hope deferred

As long as I can remember I was familiar with the proverb out of the Bible, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick."  The funny thing is I never knew that there was more to that proverb until I looked it up.  The entire proverb goes, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a promise fulfilled is a tree of life" (Prov. 13:12).  Most people would not choose this (especially the first part) as their "life verse", but this really does summarize quite concisely what my life has been both before and after marriage. When I decided to drop out of post graduate studies because I wanted to devote my life to "knowing God and making Him known", I started down a path of becoming more and more aware of  the sickness within my own heart.  Instead of finding a God who welcomed me with open arms I found myself continually stumbling forward, trying to grasp those hands that I knew were outstretched towards me but which seemed to be continually retreating.  Getting married only intensified this process, for now there were two of us with sick hearts, trying to draw closer to God but having a hard time of it.

My wife, who is very down-to-earth, can say very clearly what her deferred hopes are:  a romantically satisfying marriage, daughter healed of Downs Syndrome, and restored relationships with two sons who have been taken from her.  My deferred hope is much more metaphysical and less tangible, but to me just as down-to-earth: drawing near to God, walking with Him, loving Him with my entire being, together with loving my wife (which I've come to realize cannot and must never be separated from loving God).

I haven't told too many people that Proverbs 13:12 is my wife's and  my life verse, but the few we've told don't give us positive feedback.  The response is a pained expression on the face or some kind of comment like, "No, no, don't identify with that kind of negative statement!"  But what they don't realize, which is what is slowly starting to sink in, deeply, is that the only way to get to the second half of that verse is to go through the first half.  Or to put it another way, the only way to see miracles happen (for yourself) is to really need one.  Both my wife and I have been given the grace to believe that miracles should be a normal part of a believer's life.  It's as simple or straightforward as hearing what God is saying and believing it (Gal. 3:5).  But what do you do when you not only feel that God has told you that He is going to heal your daughter; others have also encouraged you to believe for this; and Scripture itself tells us that "nothing is impossible to them that believe" (Mt. 17:20); yet year after year goes by with nothing happening.  That's what hope deferred has been for us.

Of course, one simple solution is to stop believing for such impossible things.  But I don't want a God who's salvation is only in the abstract (saving me from hell and getting me to heaven after I die).  I want a God whose salvation is just as evident in this present physical realm as it is in the non-physical, spiritual realm.  The God that the Bible speaks of, that Jesus represented.  The walk of faith is not for wimps, is it (check out Hebrews 11)?  We can imitate the heroes of faith, but only to a point.  I've heard it said that for faith to be genuine one must walk a path that has never been walked before.  That can be scary.  One can feel very vulnerable . . . and subject to heartsickness.