It’s Impossible
"It’s impossible."
How many times have you thought that to yourself? Muttered it under your breath?
I am laying in my two-tone green hammock, strung between a trembling aspen and a maple where the college creek meets the estuary. The glorious thing about the east coast is how summer stretches way into the fall (take for example the t-shirt weather hike yesterday). The sun is warm through the hammock, the light wind rustling the sunshine-coloured fall leaves, and even the pigeons seem to be bathing in the sun as they splash in the water at the mouth of the creek.
Listening to that description, you might think life is easy and care-free. The actual story is I have so much going on, so many "impossibles," I am disciplining myself to take time on Sunday mornings for rest.
This is my last of a four-year navigation-officer training program. Fourth year was supposed to be a nice down-hill coast. Until Covid. Training has been compressed to catch up for lost courses and time. It's more of an up-hill mountain climb now. I am currently bracing for two weeks of midterms. Somehow the hours never seem enough for the amount of material to cover. It feels impossible.
There are other bigger things in life, though, sorrows shared by friends asking for prayer. Sorrows so big it’s hard to pray (on closer examine, this is because of my lack of faith in God’s power, which is why writing this is so important to help me believe). There are so many pieces that need to come together for a positive outcome, it seems impossible.
And yet, sometimes in all the “impossibilities” of life, there is a break through that surprises me. Like just this week I received a message out-of-the-blue. As a back story, I have been praying about a future project, with those prayers sounding like, “Lord, I’m willing, but you know I can’t do this alone. It’s going to need a team.” Sitting in class Tuesday I received an email: someone I have never even talked to about this is interested in being part of the team.
How does this happen? I just shake my head: seems impossible, and yet, it happened. My response reminds me of when the early believers were still gathered in Jerusalem after Jesus had returned to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit. A lame man is healed. Now compared to midterms, that seems truly impossible. But Peter asked the crowd, “Why are you amazed at this?”
So I ask myself, why am I amazed at what God does? Peter explains Jesus, handed over and disowned, put to death, but raised from the dead by God: it is “on the basis of faith in His name… and the faith which comes through Him” (Acts 3:16).
What if there is another kind of impossible to consider? What if it is impossible for God to not be more powerful that what I consider impossible? Acts 2:24 says,
“But God raised His from the dead, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.”
That changes my view of all these impossible mountains surrounding me and you, my friends. If it is impossible for God to not have the power enough to conquer these obstacles, let's rest in that. Let me pray, for myself and for you, with belief in the possibility of what God can do. And let's not be surprised at how He might answer.
Now it's time for me to get out of this hammock and go live that out. I'll have my sights set on bigger things, my Greatest Hope, as I take one step at a time this week, one more text, one more test. Whatever your next small steps, I pray you'll also be able to take them in hope in our God of impossibilities.
PS - You know I like music, so here's a song called "Impossible Things" from the Faithful: Go and Speak album that beautifully juxtaposes these two kinds of impossibility.
“You were enough for me then
You’ll be enough for me now
And that’s enough to hope a little longer
For impossible things
You do impossible things
You open my eyes
That I will survive this impossible thing
Oh whatever may come
You will always hold on
When I’m tired in the waiting
Keep me waiting
For impossible things
You do impossible things
You open my eyes
That I will survive this impossible thing”
Another photo of fall in Cape Breton