Pez Dispensers of Faith

(Photo by Ian Stauffer)

I have had a horrible bout of writer's block this week. I have done all the things that a writer/ pastor should do. I prayed and studied the scripture and sought counsel. I just started writing because sometimes you can write yourself out of a funk. All to no relief. And the longer it went, the more I panicked because Sunday was coming, and I needed to say something.

I woke up this morning four days later, and poof, it was gone. No idea why it just lifted, and it got me thinking. Sometimes we have problems that are not up to us to solve. We may want to solve them, and others around us may want us to solve them, but sometimes it's not our problem to solve but God's.

In the case of writer's block, going on with life and doing other things like pastoral visits and reading pushed the problem into God's lap. I had prayed, I had studied, I had sought counsel, I had taken action. It was now up to God to heal.

And healing didn't happen on my time scale but God's. But it came in the form God wanted it to come in and in God's time. Sometimes this can be frustrating. We want healing to come quickly and thoroughly. But life doesn't work like that. God doesn't work like that. God isn't some Pez dispenser of healing. Sometimes waiting in hope is the best thing that we can do. According to the Apostle Paul, faith is what we hope for but can't see now. So we hope for what we need and turn it over to God.

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