On Ebenezers and God's Faithfulness

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I find myself, pretty often, staring at a photo from my friend Jamie’s September wedding. It’s a goofy snap of the husbands and fiancés of my childhood friends, while they waited ever so patiently for us to be done taking group pictures of ourselves for posterity.

It’s a cute picture (mostly because Josh Hurt is the cutest, obviously), but I come back to it again and again because it reminds me of something important that I need reminding of right now: God keeps His promises.

Not that God promised me or any of my friends husbands—He didn’t. But He has promised to work everything out for our good and His glory.

That He has certainly done.

When I was 15, I had a lot of ideas about my future good. I was wrong about most of them. But some of the hopes and dreams I had then have come to the most beautiful fruition. Still being friends with my gals is one of those.

Most of us have known each other since we were grade school. We’ve been in and out of each other’s lives for nearly two decades (if you round up). And here we still are, together, in what feels like a season of perpetual celebration (we’ve had a wedding a year since 2016 and this summer there are two more).

How thankful I am for a sister tribe bound together by time and shared loves and shared grief and life lived together!

What a sweet picture of God’s provision; that we’ve been able to grow up together and now we get to celebrate things like marrying our dream boys. I don’t think, in high school, that we could have imagined the sweetness of being in our mid- and late-twenties and planning each other’s bridal showers and growing our collective husband gang.

In seasons like the one I’m in now, when I feel like something I want deeply and surely deserve is being held away at arms length, it helps immeasurably to look over my shoulder and see specific moments that God has shown me His faithfulness. 

It is then that I remember this: God has withheld no good thing from me. That isn’t how He operates at all. 

How does the hymn go?

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought

My sin, not in part but the whole,

Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul.

This sad little sinner has already been redeemed at the greatest expense. That is the kindest gift I ever can or will receive. Based on that fact alone, God has withheld nothing from me. Quite the opposite: He has given everything for me.

Yet…here I am, still longing. And God has proven time and time again that He cares about my longings, too. In His very perfect timing He has answered my pleas with dear friends, rich community, dream jobs and dream shows and the dreamiest husband (that’s the short list). There is much to be thankful for.

In the Old Testament, Samuel sets up a stone to commemorate God's help to the Israelites in their victory over the Philistines at Mizpah. 1 Samuel 7:12 says that, “he named it Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’”

I think that’s why I find a blurry picture of husbands and fiancés particularly comforting right now, in the tension of waiting. It’s an ebenezer of sorts.

The picture reminds me of friendships that have been a life-saving gift over the years. It reminds me of divine rescue and forgiveness. It reminds me that God does indeed delight in giving us the things we want, and He often knows what we want even better than we do. 

It reminds me that God lavishes us with good things.

It reminds me that God is faithful, always.

And even if a particular desire never comes to fruition, this fact is still gloriously true: my sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more.

So, praise the Lord, oh my soul.