Living on a Prayer
May 18, 2022
Sometimes I find myself wishing that God was more professional. I wish Spirit seemed to care about work hours and personal boundaries and timelines. But then again, I’m so glad that God goes before us in this work. I’m grateful that God’s Spirit is working evenings, nights and weekends. I’m grateful that God is boundless when we can only do so much.
As a Christian-faith organization, we hold the tension of the call to action and the call to trust. When we have done all we can (and we must), there’s a point where we have to simply trust that God is working with us.
The Affordable Housing Crisis has always impacted our work, but never like it is presently. Case manager Makayla has been striving for months to find housing for a family with a number of significant obstacles in front of them. Makayla and I have been meeting weekly to discuss how we can best meet these needs. Despite our best efforts, we’ve found our wheels spinning. Then, in a recent meeting we said, “Let’s just give this [specific outcome] a rest. Let’s release it and allow ourselves to simply move on.”
Later that day, I sat with a portion of Psalm 139 and reworked it:
7 Where can we go from your spirit?
Or where can we flee from your presence?
8 If we meet someone facing homelessness,
You are already there with them;
9 When families overcome and graduate,
10 You’ve made the way before them and go with them.
11 If we say, “Surely the affordable housing crisis
Will overwhelm this work,”
12 Even that is no problem for you to face,
For you arrive with us in struggle,
You turn systems on their head
For the sake of Love.
All I can tell you is that by the end of that week, we landed the meeting we had waited for for months -the one we were ready to walk away from. Now housing is finally on the horizon for this family.
Even as staff, we are called to be transformed by this work. We are invited to remember that we do not work alone. We must climb the mountain, but we cannot be raised up on eagles’ wings unless we step off and trust.