even so

You sit with the compose window open … Monday … Tuesday … Wednesday … Thursday … Friday … Saturday … but the words refuse to obey, to be caught and neatly placed into ordered sense. There are too many of them, swelling and surging inside you … and yet none of them can convey the inner struggle going on. More than a struggle, a whole war against the darkness of aching for a friend’s difficult and bewildering path.

The fear-words are painful, lancing you every time they crash against the inside of your skull. Your inability to capture them and turn their fear into faith adds more pain, and it draws your body out of balance, pulling, pulling, pulling at you to succumb … to fall.

What if … what if … what if? The treacherous phrase circles in your mind. You can’t sleep for it. Two powerful words, capable of twisting your insides. What if?

But in the early morning hours, lying awake because the worry has become too painful, and your head is pounding with it, you discover these aren’t the two most powerful words in existence. There are two words far stronger, far mightier.

Even so.

Two quiet words speaking such resolute determination that even what if pales, bows down in acknowledgment.

Even if the fig tree does not break forth in bud as if extending its wings,
and there is no wealth flowing from the twining vines,
even if the good works of the bright olive prove untrue,
and the spread-out fields accomplish no food,
even if the flock is cut off from the fold,
and there is no herd breaking forth from the stalls…
Even so will I jump for joy, triumphing
in my Strength, my Almighty God, my Deliverer.
YHWH Adonai, The One Who Is, my sovereign Lord,
He is my strength, my wealth, my virtue and my valor
and He will make my feet like the strong hind’s feet!
He will make me nimble-footed as an archer, even on the highest places.
~ Habakkuk 3:17-19

Even so.

Even so will I rejoice. Even so will I keep believing in Your goodness.

These mighty words quiet the swirling what ifs in your mind. The fear-words are still present, still drawing screeching claws along the insides of your brain, but you don’t feel their pain. You don’t hear their clamor. Because everything within you is soothed … soothed by the acceptance of even so, the dogged faith of refusing to succumb.

You don’t look at the fear anymore. There is only one place to look at: Him.

Light breaks through. It does not take away the surrounding darkness, no. But the darkness hardly matters now. Just the Light. The Light that is here.

Sunday.

And the words finally come, drawn into order by the Light, and by the quiet strength of even so.

Photograph by kind courtesy of Steve Sanders

Because the light is what draws our focus to the right place. The Light is what keeps us rejoicing. Even in the dark. Even so.

See more of Steve’s work by clicking through here.

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