When head and heart are in different places...

...life can get quite intolerable.

This is where I'm finding myself this week. My heart is telling me that God is still very much 'there' - it's just a knowing awareness.

At the same time, my head is screaming 'how can He be?' I don't know why, but today I was drawn back into the age old question of suffering - God could prevent or at least stop it, so why doesn't He?

Just to add salt to the wounds, the New Testament reading at Morning Prayer this morning included these verses from Romans chapter 5:

"Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."

For the first time ever, it infuriated me! Its verses like these that can give 'pious' Christians a warped persecution complex - you know, the kind who scream "whoopiedoo, bring it on, I'm being persecuted therefore I must be a good Christian!"

Hope? Hope is futile for this life when you're hanging on the edge of oblivion - because where is the proof of God's love? It certainly isn't visible.

And yet still...

my heart knows that my head is getting it all wrong about these verses. My heart knows from traumatic experience that what Paul wrote is very true - I wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't gone through what I did in the past.

And as for hope, well it is just that - hope.

Hope for better times.
Hope for a brighter future.
Hope for release from suffering.
Hope for a life spent with God in eternity.

Now "I'm home enough to know I'm lost..."