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Trust, Hope, and Bowing The Knee.


Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (I Corinthians 13:4-8a) 
 
          If you’re read this blog for a while, you have probably read about my issues with words like “trust” and “hope.” It’s not that I don’t trust or don’t hope, but that I don’t understand the definitions well enough to recognize them when I encounter them. I came home from Florida about a month ago looking for God’s guidance about what my summer was to hold. What do I do about the garden? Do I get a job? What will caring for Dad require? There were a few things that I planned. I wanted to exercise to get stronger. I wanted to get my story finished. I wanted to do some birding. I wanted to learn to do something practical.
          All that may yet come to pass, but most of it isn’t happening as quickly as I’d like. The past few days have been especially trying. My left knee hurts – not just an “oh, I worked those muscles” sort of hurt, but an “ouch, something is wrong!” sort of hurt. I went to my chiropractor. He sent me for an X-ray. He doesn’t know whether I injured it or the cartilage has broken down. In other words, whether it’s going to take weeks to recover or require surgery. I came home looking for direction, but this is not the direction I expected to get.
          So, as I have been discussing loving God in the light of our passage, I have to ask myself questions, starting at the ground and working up. Am I going to trust God in this? Am I going to hope in God through this? It might all blow over with a little TLC and a week or two, or it might not. What should I trust God for? What should I hope for? I gave myself yesterday to start to absorb the situation. Yesterday, I allowed myself to figuratively run in circles, screaming and pulling my hair out. Today, it’s time to get to work. Except… work on what? I go back to my chiropractor next Wednesday, so I don’t know what to work toward. This puts me smack dab at the beginning of the hardest time in the process: WAITING.
         So, what do I trust God to do? For what should I hope? I come back to my favorite prayer request: wisdom, direction and attitude. Those are what I trust God to provide. He can make everything all better miraculously. He can cause the problem to be something minor that will heal in a few weeks. He can send me into the challenge of a knee replacement. Those are things. They are possibilities, but that’s not what this passage is talking about. It doesn’t way that love always trusts that things will work out, or always hopes that things go the way we want. Love trusts the loved one. Love hopes for what is best for the loved one.
       There’s another phrase that has been on my mind in recent months. “Bow the knee.” Bowing the knee requires trust and hope because it puts one at the mercy of the other. How does one bow the knee when it hurts? I know that God is looking for the knee of our hearts to bow, not the knee of our leg, but I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the phrase and the problem both showed up in the past several months. If nothing else, my sense of humor is focused there. I’m not looking forward to the struggle, whatever that struggle may be, but I have to rejoice because I will have a chance to trust God’s direction and to hope in Him – in a way that I may be able to observe and grow in wisdom, if I have the right attitude.

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