Episode 4: Hope if You Feel Abandoned
Erin Davis: Hey Laura, heavy question: Can you think of a time when you ever felt abandoned?
Laura Booz: That is a heavy question, and honestly, the first thing that pops in my mind is not a heavy answer.
It happened in high school. I was following a friend home from a party. We were out in the boondocks. I have no sense of direction—this is before GPS and cell phones and all of the newfangled things!
Erin: Oh yes, I remember!
Laura: So, without pulling a map out and finding my way home, the best other option was just to follow my friend. So, we were driving through back woods, and I was just following along, thinking, Okay, we’re going to pull into my driveway eventually. We were turning left, turning right, up hills, down hills, so on and so forth; you get the idea. Suddenly this car …
Erin Davis: Hey Laura, heavy question: Can you think of a time when you ever felt abandoned?
Laura Booz: That is a heavy question, and honestly, the first thing that pops in my mind is not a heavy answer.
It happened in high school. I was following a friend home from a party. We were out in the boondocks. I have no sense of direction—this is before GPS and cell phones and all of the newfangled things!
Erin: Oh yes, I remember!
Laura: So, without pulling a map out and finding my way home, the best other option was just to follow my friend. So, we were driving through back woods, and I was just following along, thinking, Okay, we’re going to pull into my driveway eventually. We were turning left, turning right, up hills, down hills, so on and so forth; you get the idea. Suddenly this car turns into a house, I pull into the driveway, and the person gets out of the driver’s seat, and it is not my friend!
Erin: Oh, Laura! They thought you were totally stalking them or something!
Laura: I felt abandoned. Here I was, wholeheartedly trusting this person, thinking it was my friend, following them all along, and then I’m lost in the middle of nowhere, and I didn’t know what to do.
So yes, that sinking feeling . . .
Erin: How’d you get home?
Laura: I don’t remember!
Erin: Followed some other car!
Laura: I’ll tell you how: the kindness of strangers. I can probably attribute that to how I got home many times in life.
Erin: I can feel that sinking feeling. I don’t know that I’ve had that experience, but I can relate.
Laura: Welcome to The Deep Well with Erin Davis. It’s a podcast from Revive Our Hearts, and I’m Laura Booz. We’re calling this season “Eclipses.” Erin’s been taking us to places in the Bible where it looked like the light was disappearing and darkness was closing in. As she continues that study, you and I will get some hope for any time we may feel abandoned.
Here’s Erin.
Erin: Let me tell you about my three-year-old. His name is Ezra, and he is the cutest, funniest, craziest little guy you ever did want to meet. Bedtime with him is so fun, as bedtime with three-year-olds always are. He usually goes up to bed pretty happy, and we put him in his dinosaur jammies, and we get him tucked into his bed. We usually read a Bible story with him and his brothers, and we’ll sing a song or two, and the whole time he’s always smiling and snuggly and happy to be in his room.
Then there is this moment, almost every night, when we flip the switch to turn the lights off in his room, and somehow it flips a switch in Ezra’s little heart. His room goes from his happiest place—it has all of his favorite stuffed animals, all of his favorite toys, all of his favorite people—and that light switch flips, and to him it becomes a really scary place. Suddenly, every shadow in his room seems like a monster, and his daddy, my husband, has to go around the room, night after night, and say, “Look, buddy! This isn’t a monster; this is just the shadow from your dresser. Look, buddy; this is just the shadow from the rocking chair. This is just the shadow from your brother’s bed.”
That nighttime ritual, I know it won’t last. I know it’s a three-year-old thing. But I’ve been thinking about it as I’ve been preparing to teach this series. This season of The Deep Well is called “Eclipses.” We’ve been looking for examples in Scripture where darkness seemed like it was going to overwhelm or eclipse the light.
There are a couple big ideas we’ve been talking about in every episode. One is that sin causes darkness. Another is way more important; it’s really what I want you to get as you listen to this season, and that’s that Jesus, the Light of the world—capital-L Light—He’s always going to push back against that darkness. What I want you to carry in your heart when this season is over is that the darkness will not, the darkness cannot eclipse the light!
In the last episode we looked at the crucifixion, and there was something that happened in the sky that was like a supernatural eclipse. The world went dark for three hours in the middle of the day. But, more importantly, there was a spiritual eclipse. God’s judgment, our sin, fell on Jesus on the cross. It really was a dark day.
I want you to keep the cross in mind as you open your Bible to the book of Acts, chapter 1. I’m going to give you a quick refresher, because it’s always good to get the lay of the land when we open our Bibles. Jesus had been crucified, He had been buried, and then He rose again. If I was a big-time Hollywood producer, that’s the moment where I’d say, “Roll credits!” But it’s not the end of the story that God is writing.
After Jesus rose from the grave, He walked the earth for forty more days. We see that right here in Acts chapter 1:3. We can know from the Gospels that during those forty days when Jesus walked the earth, He went to His disciples and He spoke to them with His glorified vocal chords, and He touched them with His glorified hands. He commissioned them as the first Christian missionaries, and then . . . He left them. Acts 1:6–7.
So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority."
What’s going on here? Well, I get the sense that the disciples thought, We have crossed the finish line! They’d been through something really, really traumatic; in fact, multiple traumatic events. But here, I think they thought it was over. Jesus was back, and He had promised them that He was going to establish His kingdom, and I’m sure they were thinking, There is no time like the present.
As we read the Gospels and head into the book of Acts, I’m sure they thought that the Roman government, which had just crucified their Lord; and the religious establishment, which was making their lives miserable; and coming after them next was going to be overturned, and that Jesus was going to rule! As I read their question: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” I can’t help but think of my own expectations of Jesus. They expected Him to do something on their timeline, and I have expectations of Jesus; we all do. And He’s not beholden to them, and that can cause us to see shadows.
I don’t imagine Jesus’ answer was very satisfying to them. He said, “It’s not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.” He didn’t give them any clue as to when He would come and establish this kingdom that He promised.
He also didn’t dwell there. That was the paramount question on their minds, but He told them to get busy being witnesses, telling the dark world about the light.
Let’s pick it up at verse 8.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
Again, as I’m imagining this scene, I can almost feel the disciples’ zeal and their excitement rising up in them. I think people would describe me as a go-getter, so I’m imagining them thinking, Alright! Let’s get busy! Let’s get to it! But verse 9 is where we start to see the shadows of an eclipse take place.
When he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way you saw him go into heaven." (vv. 9–11)
This feels a little different than the other eclipses. There’s the Fall of man, where darkness entered the human heart and brought death with it through sin. There was the Babylonian captivity, where Judah’s king saw his sons murdered in front of him, right before his eyes were gouged out. That’s dark. And the crucifixion, where the whole world went dark, and we can see the battle between good and evil, dark and light, being waged and won on the cross. But here the disciples are left staring up at the sky. They’re shielding their eyes, and two angelic messengers come to visit.
A solar eclipse happens when the sun is covered over. In this case, the Son was clouded over. That’s what Scripture says; He was covered by a cloud. Don’t you know the disciples just kept watching, thinking that the cloud was going to pass and they’d see Him again.
An eclipse happens when a source of light can no longer be seen, and we see in this series that sometimes sin does the eclipsing, sometimes it’s the judgment of God; but what the ascension shows us is that sometimes God in His wisdom, for reasons we don’t always understand, and for purposes that only He understands, sometimes He covers Himself from our view.
The disciples had walked with Jesus—walked with Jesus! Can you imagine? They had eaten with Him. They’d ministered with Him. They saw the feeding of the 5,000 with their own eyeballs. They were in the boat when He walked on the water. They had been radically changed by Him, they had buried His body, and they had received Him back alive. And here at the ascension, this is the beginning of them having to learn how to live without Him, in a way.
This is Acts 1. They had not yet received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and they couldn’t really understand what Jesus meant when He told them He was sending a Helper. They just saw Him go. Here’s the eclipse that happens in our hearts: it’s the sense that God has abandoned us.
I think of a sweet friend who lost her baby boy to cancer after a truly hellish battle. She loves the Lord, and she believes His Word, but I know there are moments when the hope of being reunited with her son gets eclipsed by her deep grief.
I think of a young widow in my church who never expected to be starting over again. I imagine that the promise of His comfort—which, again, she believes—that there are times when it seems like it’s been covered over by her deep loneliness.
I think of the many saints I know who have been praying fervently for years, decades for Jesus to return. I think, do they ever wonder if He’s not coming back at all? Does their firm belief that He will keep that promise, does it ever get eclipsed by doubt?
I think about a story my mom once told me. My dad had just left her, making her a single mom of three small children. It was on one of those first weekends without him, when she had to share custody with the man who had betrayed her and broken heart. She said she got down on her knees and begged God for a sign of His presence. But there was no angelic messenger. She didn’t get a burning bush. Temporarily, everything she knew about His constant presence got eclipsed, covered by her deep sorrow.
Let me get really personal. I hope it makes you feel connected, not uncomfortable. I have some pretty significant abandonment issues. They mostly come from that dad who chose to leave my family when I was a little girl, leaving my mom without a husband and me without a dad in the home. That’s not how it’s supposed to be, and it causes a lifetime of heartache. But that’s not the only time I can think of. There have been plenty of other times when I’ve felt left.
Here at the ascension, the angels tell the disciples that Jesus had been taken from them, and I just have the sense that all of us know how it feels to have someone or some relationship taken from us.
There’s a song that we used to sing in church several years ago, and the lyrics were, “Your love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me.” Maybe some people hear that and they think of running out like running out of milk. But when I sing that song, when I hear those lyrics, I hear that God is not going to run out of my life, He’s not going to abandon me. I do believe that. I know it’s true. But there are times—even though I have put my hope in Jesus Christ, and even though I love His Word and seek to live it out, even though I believe His beautiful promises, even though I have the Holy Spirit living in me, even though on some level I know He’s always with me—sometimes I feel the dark fear that He has left me.
It’s just like Ezra at bedtime. Darkness distorts our perceptions; it makes us see things differently than they really are. I want you to remember that as we’re talking about eclipses, we’re using darkness as a metaphor for sin. Sometimes, it’s our own sin that makes us see God differently than He is, that makes us think He has left us. Sometimes it’s somebody else’s sin that casts shadows and makes us see God as someone who would ever, could ever abandon His beloved.
At the ascension, Jesus was taken from the view of His disciples. They could not see Him anymore. He chose to hide Himself, and they kept looking at the sky because they wanted to see Him. I want to see Him! I can’t blame them. I would give everything I own for a glimpse of Him.
Remember, they had just asked Him if the time had come for Him to establish an earthly kingdom, and they planned to reign with Him. That was what was on their minds. In John’s Gospel, right before He died, the same disciples had told Jesus how sad they were that He was going to leave. They experienced the trauma of the cross and the thrill of the resurrection . . . and then there’s the ascension.
What did they do next after they realized He wasn’t just hiding behind a cloud and they weren’t going to see Him again in the same way? I don’t know, but they had to move forward in faith, trusting in what they could no longer see with their physical eyes. They had to move forward, and we know that they did. We see it in the rest of the book of Acts. They had to move forward, trusting in what they could not see and holding onto His promise that He would come back for them and that He would always be with them.
When I open my Bible, I can’t help but wonder if Matthew had the same kind of eclipse we’re talking about in this episode, if his fears that he’d never see Jesus ever eclipsed what he knew to be true. I’m picking on Matthew because he also wrote about the ascension, and he included something that Luke, who is the writer of Acts, did not include. Let me read you Matthew 28:16–20.
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain that Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit . . . [So far this account tracks really similarly with the one in Acts chapter 1. But in verse 20, Matthew adds this] . . . teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Before Jesus ascended, He blessed His disciples. What did He bless them with? Yes, His presence, for a moment. But He also gave them this beautiful promise: “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
God has been saying that same thing for millennia. I know this episode is not going to hit all of you the same way, but I also know for some of you listening there is a darkness creeping over the light in your heart. It looks like a deep fear that God has abandoned you.
When you read about the ascension, you might want to grab onto Jesus and scream, “How could You leave us here like this?!” Some of you are losing hope in His return. But what we keep seeing in Scripture is that Jesus always pushes back against the darkness, and His promises turn the lights back on.
If you were in my living room, you could give voice to all of those dark fears, and I would have some of my own to share. Then I’d say what I always say on The Deep Well, “Let’s open our Bibles and ask God to use His Word to bring light to the darkest corners of our hearts.” If you’re listening and you are in a dark night of the soul, like that one my mama had, where she begged God for any sign of His presence, I have a switch for you to flip. It does turn the light back on.
It’s 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
Because of the eclipse that happened in Genesis 3, we do have to live in a dark world, and because of the ascension we have to do it without being able to physically see, feel, hear or touch Jesus. Sometimes, because we are sinners, we feel distant from His presence. But the ascension was not an eclipse. He has sent us His Spirit, and we can trust His promises, knowing that someday—it won’t be long now—we will see Him face to face.
Laura: God designed us to live in community, so when we lose someone we’re close to, it’s really painful. Erin Davis has been reminding us of the hope we have in Jesus. He will never leave us, even when we’re tempted to feel like He has.
Erin will be right back, but if you like the way Erin helps you get to know your Bible, I hope you’ll get a copy of her Bible study, Seven Feasts: Finding Christ in the Sacred Celebrations of the Old Testament. You’ll be flipping back and forth between Leviticus and the Gospels, getting to know Jesus through some powerful Old Testament parties. You’ll find Seven Feasts when you visit ReviveOurHearts.com/TheDeepWell. That’s ReviveOurHearts.com/TheDeepWell.
It’s time for Erin Unscripted!
Erin Unscripted
I have to tell you, Erin, this was my favorite episode so far! You just have me so hopeful, my eyes lifted up to the heavens. “This same Jesus, who is taken away from you, will return again through the clouds.” I’m so excited!
Honestly, this has been showing up in my devotions recently in the element of noticing that God keeps requiring His people to wait. It’s like a pillar of our faith, almost. I was thinking about Abraham who had to wait until he was “as good as dead” before God fulfilled the promise of giving him Isaac.
Erin: He did.
Laura: It seems like it’s sometimes God’s style to just wait until that darkest hour, and then boom, the light.
I’m just wondering, are there any other Bible characters or Bible stories where you see this same pattern happening?
Erin: Well, as you’re saying that, many are coming to mind. I’m thinking, That could be a whole series of The Deep Well, just tracing waiting, because in a lot of ways that’s what the whole Bible is: waiting on the Lord. You mentioned Abraham; that’s a great example.
I think of Moses. Moses had periods of waiting. I think of Ruth, who was waiting for her Boaz. All those stories, we sit down and read the story from beginning to end and the waiting seems abbreviated or accelerated, but for them, there were long waits!
The disciples, even as they were with Jesus, they kept waiting for Him to take over and do the things He was going to do. Then He died and resurrected and ascended, and then they were still waiting, because He had told them, “I’m going to my Father’s house to prepare a place for you.”
They knew that ultimately they were going to be with Jesus again and He was preparing something spectacular for them. They were back in their regular old houses, not the ones that Jesus was supernaturally building for them, so they had to wait for that. They had to wait for Pentecost. That was really Jesus’s primary command to them as He was preparing to ascend: “Go and wait. I’m going to send the Holy Spirit,” which He did. But they didn’t have any grasp of what they were waiting for, just that they were told to wait.
The Bible ends with precious, precious words from John. He asks the Lord to come quickly, and there’s waiting his heart, longing in his heart. So you’re right, that is God’s style, to ask us to wait. But it’s also God’s style to do what He said He was going to do and to keep His promises, and eventually those waiting periods are over.
Laura: If this is part of our commitment to Christ, part of the cross that He asks us to bear, how do we wait?
Erin: I’m not sure I’m a great waiter. I think I have grown, but I think we keep hoping in where real hope is. So often I think we think, I can’t wait till the wait is over, for whatever it is. That’s where our hope is. Our hope is in a change in circumstances. That is fleeting at best and frustrating at worst, because you can’t control when the circumstances will change. So I do think waiting well is an act of worship, and what it bottom-line communicates is, “I trust You, God.”
Laura: Yes. I just think of those regular practices He’s given us, like, “Do not stop meeting with one another, as some are in the habit of doing, because we need each other to encourage one another while it is called today.” (see Heb. 3:13) Right? Just keep on meeting, keep on encouraging one another. That’s part of the waiting—you and are I having conversation, me tuning in to Grounded, meeting together as a congregation on Sunday. That is us waiting patiently.
Erin: You’re so right. The waiting is way harder when you try to go it alone.
Laura: Oh yes!
Erin: Maybe impossible for some things. But that verse you referenced, “Encourage each other as long as it is called today” . . . I always say, we don’t have to encourage each other on a day that doesn’t end in y, but if it ends in y, the call of Scripture is we need to encourage each other, and encourage each other in what? Not just, “I like your hair,” which is a nice thing to say, but that’s not the kind of encouragement Scripture is calling us to there. Scripture’s calling us to encourage each other to wait in hope.
Laura: Ryan has a good friend in the military. Almost every time they connect and have a conversation, you hear one or the other of them say, “Well, we’re going to heaven!” That expression just reminds you over and over again, “Don’t forget what’s down the road,” and it’s encouraging.
Erin: Yes, heaven’s worth waiting for, so if that’s what we’re waiting on the Lord for, we can wait as long as it takes, because well, we’re going to heaven.
Laura: In this lesson you said something about Jesus not being beholden to us, and because of that we might feel disappointed, and we might doubt. I just wanted to talk about that some more. Have you ever been in a situation where, I don’t know, you expected Him to work in a certain way or you thought, “These are the rules, this is the formula,” and He ended up taking things in another direction?
Erin: For sure. I think I’ve had a consciousness lately of the ways I talk about God that communicate that I do think He’s beholden to me. I’ll say, like, “I told the Lord . . .” I get this check in my spirit, like, oh, I don’t get to tell the Lord anything—in terms of I don’t tell Him what to do. I can certainly talk to Him and share my heart with Him.
I can think of a really specific time. I was pregnant with our first son, Eli, and he was diagnosed with a pretty serious kidney issue at twelve weeks in utero. So I had a lot of time to think before he was born. I just never really thought anything bad was going to happen. I just thought, I am married to a pastor. I love Jesus. I read my Bible. I’m going to pray. and I’m going to believe. I got some women from my church together, and they prayed. We all had these really, really heartfelt prayers, and we meant it. I just thought, It’s going to get healed. He’s going to be healed. I really didn’t even entertain other options a lot.
He was born, and there was a partial healing that happened I was like, “I knew it! I knew God was going to do that!” Then we pulled back on testing for a period of years because it seemed like his kidneys were okay. Then, several years later, when the same issue was identified in one of our other sons, we thought, We’ll just have him scanned and see how he’s doing. And in the interim, his kidney had died.
I never thought that was going to happen to him. You know, I just thought God was beholden to me, in a sense, that He was going to heal him. I had asked, and He was going to do it. I remember leaving that appointment where we found out Eli’s kidney was dead, which means sort of an unknown future for him in some ways, and I remember we went to a restaurant and my french fries didn’t have any taste. I was so crushed that God hadn’t done what I expected him to do. I thought He was going to do it my way.
Laura: Erin, I can imagine you might have felt that sense of disappointment and abandonment in the Lord. What was the next step? What happened next?
Erin: Well, there’s a danger when somebody gives you a microphone and lets you talk about God and the Bible that I would polish things up in ways that they weren’t actual, so I don’t want to communicate that that very moment I chose to believe Scripture. I didn’t at that very moment, but actually it didn’t take very long. Within that day, within a couple of days, I held onto the right kind of hope, which is resurrection hope, and that is that the Lord may or may not heal kidneys inside my child, but He certainly will heal my child. There is going to come a day where Eli’s going to have a resurrected body.
Also, I did feel the Lord’s presence. He did not abandon me. He was right there with me when I got that news that “your little boy’s kidney has died.” I knew He was there with me, and that is such a comfort.
I seem to tie everything with God back to parenting—I don’t know; it just helps me make sense. I think about my own kids and how much they’re willing to face almost anything if they know Mom and Dad will go with them. They’ll face that first hard day of school. They’ll make it through the night when they’re not feeling good, and any number of hard things. They just want me and their daddy to be right there with them. That is what I experienced in that moment with the Lord, and in so many other moments.
Laura: Yes, I think there’s even a book with this expression, but the promise is His presence. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He will be with us.
Well, one of the things you talked about in this lesson is that sometimes it’s our sin or someone else’s sin that casts a shadow and causes us to think that Jesus has left us. I couldn’t help but think about the many people right now who are sharing deconversion stories, stories where they were part of the church, they had a confession of faith, and now they no longer do, or they’re choosing a different God or thing to put their faith in. They’re walking away because, usually, they’ve been hurt. Usually, they’ve been hurt by the church or a Christian, a Christian who used something about Christianity to hurt them.
I’m wondering what your thoughts have been as we kind of see this trend happening, as you see people reeling from hurts, what that means, and where Jesus is in it all?
Erin: I’ve been watching pretty closely. I’ve had conversations with particularly young women, in their twenties that describe something like what you just described. I think there’s a spectrum. I think it’s really great to ask hard questions. I think truth can hold up to our questions. But you’re right. As I’ve listened to a lot of those hard conversations, it can always be traced back to hurt within the church.
I wish hurt didn’t exist within the church, but I actually don’t see it as evidence that we’ve gotten it wrong. I see it as evidence that we’ve gotten it so right; that this is why we need a Savior so desperately, because we hurt ourselves and we hurt each other—intentionally, unintentionally. Jesus really is the antidote to that. My strong hope and conviction—I think this is what we’ll see—is that some of those who right now are choosing to walk away from the Lord, I think many will circle back, because the other places that they are going to run to for hope and healing, they’re empty. There’s no substitute for the presence of God in our lives, none! All of mankind who doesn’t know Jesus is trying every possible alternative to experience the peace and the joy and the life that comes from life with Jesus, and none of it works.
I think as I watch that, I know, we hurt each other. I’ve hurt people, and people have hurt me. What it makes me want to do and what it makes me want for others is that we would run so hard toward Jesus, not away from Him, because He really is the only good, right, righteous alternative.
Laura: What’s one practical step that a listener can do today if they really resonated with that feeling of being abandoned by Jesus?
Erin: I write Scripture on my arms all the time.
Laura: You do?
Erin: I do; all the time. I get a Sharpie, and I write verses on my forearm. Usually, it is something about the fact that I am not abandoned, that I am Christ’s, that He is with me, that He will not leave me, that I belong to Him, that He belongs to me. So that’s really practical, and it’s something I really do. If you ever see me with Sharpie on my arm, you can know I had some sort of internal battle that preceded that where I thought He had left me or was going to leave me or could leave me, and I chose to stamp myself with truth.
Laura: Wow, I love that, because our feelings can be so enormous and convincing, especially for a feeling person. I’m a feeling person. Are you a feeling person?
Erin: I’m not a feeling person, but I have feelings, and when I have feelings, they’re big!
Laura: Yes. They feel so convincing about how things look in our little, limited eyes, our little, limited vision.
Erin: And from a human perspective, it’s a right response. I mean, as I said in this episode, I was abandoned by my dad as a little girl. Many people have had that experience or some version of it; I’m not unique in it. But a right human response to that kind of abandonment is fear of abandonment, because it’s so painful and it impacts so much of my life. But just because it’s a right human response doesn’t mean that it rightly reflects who God is and what He’s claimed to be. So those feelings aren’t lying to me, necessarily, and I wouldn’t categorize them as bad. They’re a natural consequence of my dad’s choice to sin. But they’re not ultimate, either. What’s ultimately true is that the Lord has not abandoned me.
Laura: I’m picturing us, when we have those big emotions that you were saying, they’re not wrong, but they drive us to the Lord. I’m picturing a newborn baby. You’re right there with them. They’re lying on a blanket on the floor; everything is okay in their world, but they have this startle reflex and they think they’re falling.
Erin: Oh, that makes me so sad!
Laura: Their arms flail, their legs flail, they cry. If we as sinful mothers and fathers come right to the rescue—you know, we come right in and we hold their body close, and we hush and we say, “Oh, it’s okay; you’re fine; I have you.” How much more so when we come to our heavenly Father with those “anxious tremors” and say, “I feel abandoned,” or “I feel anxious. I feel like You’ve left this whole project, and I can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.” He’s going to be good, and He’s going to hold us close!
Erin: What a great picture. Maybe that’s part of why the Lord engineered that startle reflex in babies, to teach us that lesson.
Laura: Maybe.
On the next episode of The Deep Well, we’ll look at another example of an emotional eclipse. Erin’s going to introduce us to a Bible character that she says should be elevated to hero status, and I think you might agree.
We’re releasing every episode of this season at once, so that episode is ready for you. If you have your earbuds in and you have some time, take a listen now! If not, tune in later. We’ll see you then.
The Deep Well with Erin Davis is a production of Revive Our Hearts, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.
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