It’s Christmas card exchanging season, and often that includes a letter that wraps up all the notable events that have taken place in the sender’s life. I used to do the card thing and sometimes included a letter, but for the past decade I’ve pretty much done neither. For one thing, we have email and social media that tends to keep us informed throughout the year. For another, it’s just too much. Too time consuming and too expensive.

I often think back to a comment my colleague made years ago as she sat down to write her annual letter. “What if we really wrote about everything that happened instead of the remarkably good things?” she wondered. “What if the year brought more sorrow and disappointment than good, impressive stuff? What if we listed our cares and trials? Our prayer requests? How long would this card/letter exchanging tradition last?” Probably not long.

We aren’t accustomed to sharing what really concerns us, just our accomplishments and our happy blessings. But as my favorite Laura Story song goes, “What if [our] blessings come in raindrops, What if [our] healing comes through tears? What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near?” 

I’m reading through Judges right now and today’s passage was about Gideon. There he was, one of God’s people, living at a time in which his fellow Israelites weren’t remembering how they had been brought out of Egypt, and weren’t obeying God; and because they weren’t, all their crops were being plundered and stolen by the Midianites and the Amalekites—even though they had “cried out to the Lord” about the situation. 

So Gideon is in hiding, threshing his wheat in his father’s winepress of all places, so that the Midianites newon’t see him and take it, when an angel appears to him and says in so many words, “You are a mighty man because God is with you.” 

Gideon argues that God has forsaken His people. He is not with them or Gideon. But the angel repeats himself and then tells Gideon to take this “might of yours” and save Israel from Midian. Read the story in Judges 6, and you’ll see how this so-called mighty man hems and haws before he reluctantly agrees to this assignment. How when told to tear down the altar the Israelites have built to false idols, he does it by night so that no one knows who did it. This mighty man of God. Yet I know in the successive chapters I will read later this week, that Gideon’s faith will grow, that God is indeed with him, and that his victories will be tremendously great. Something to write about to his family and friends.

Many times during the past year I could have identified with Gideon. I didn’t feel mighty. I have lacked boldness. I have hidden behind pleasantries rather than sharing hurts or recognizing the problems of others. At times, I wasn’t sure God was with me. I have grieved over loved ones who died and loved ones who don’t know the Lord. There were joyless days. 

But over and over again, I have seen God reminding me of who He is, and how because of Him I am no longer in bondage to sin. I’ve read books this year that greatly encouraged me in my Christian walk. Old and new friendships have grown deeper. There have been many blessings in my family as well as disappointments. Disappointments that feel not just like falling raindrops, but more like a steady downpour. Yet I do see that these are and will become blessings in disguise. 

God’s will is coming to pass. With goodness and mercy. And abundant love. Through all of it, the good and bad. God is with me, and His promises and His word are so trustworthy. The depth of my relationship with Jesus steadily grows sweeter and sweeter. So, it has been a good year, and I hope you are able to say the same.

One of the best things that happened this year was a rekindling of a very long neglected friendship. How awesome it was to hear the developments of this friend’s unique life and agree that our lives seldom take on any semblance to how we picture them when we’re young. She had been waiting for hers to live up to her own happy ending, as she had imagined it by her standards back then. But that particular ending never came. Instead she found out that other blessings abound, and she is joyfully content. God is enough. Jesus is enough. And we are most happy when we rest in His will and abide in His love. 

Our desired happy endings never bring us to that place. They do not result in a deepening and strengthening faith in God. As the new year appears on the horizon, there will be more hard times. Difficult times. Times I would rather not face. Difficult conversations I would rather not have. Disappointments. 

But God is with me, with me in every battle. Always with me. Even when He requires me to tear down the idols that distract me from Him. There will also be many quiet times with Him when He will meet with me in His Word and remind me who I am. That in Him, I am mighty. He will show me that I can do all He calls me to do through Christ who strengthens me. Not to fear. But trust. And He will pour out blessings as well.

“We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

“'Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

“We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

“When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not our home

“What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise”    

—“Blessings” by Laura Story