The days of doing hard things

“This is so hard! Why is it so hard?!” my youngest collapses on his desk knocking books and papers to the floor. The assignment on his computer is flashing green, but when he clicks on it nothing happens. “It’s due right now! I’m going to get a zero!” He beats hard against the desk with the computer mouse as if maybe a little elbow grease might undo whatever is holding that icon hostage. Tears stream down his face, and I can’t see straight for the headache forming in my eyes. Welcome to another day of digital learning here in the upside-down world of 2020.

I don’t think we have ever lived through a more challenging year. And I know that our kids have not. This is just plain hard. School is not meant to be done through a computer. Life is not meant to be lived in isolation. Turning in an assignment is not supposed to be the most difficult part.

None of this is normal, I think to myself as I reboot the computer in hopes of ending the digital drama for the day. The world feels as if it is spinning in the wrong direction, and everywhere I look there are more hard things to navigate. I find that I have to remind myself to breathe.

Lord, what are you doing? Where are you in the middle of this? Why is all of this so hard? I push against the edge of every corner in my life because there is no part of it that feels settled.

“I am doing a great work and I cannot come down” (Nehemiah 6:3).

These little words from the Old Testament book of Nehemiah pop into my head as I start down the rabbit hole of thinking about the ways that these days are hard and unrelenting. God always uses this story to turn me away from my circumstances and back to him.

Here’s a little history to help it all make sense (just a little history, I promise. I won’t make you click on anything to take a quiz).

Nehemiah was a Jew, one of God’s chosen people, living in captivity in Babylon during the Old Testament times. When the Jews were finally released and allowed to return to Jerusalem, God gave Nehemiah some work to do. God laid it on Nehemiah’s heart to go and rebuild the wall around the sacred city of Jerusalem. Huge job for a man who was just the cupbearer to the king. But, Nehemiah knew it was work God had given him to do.

That means it was going to be easy and go well with him, right? God’s going to make it all perfect and the amazing beautiful wall will be rebuilt and Nehemiah will just spend his days marveling at this great accomplishment.

Oh, how I wish that this was the way things always worked. I tend to think that if God is in the middle of something then it will go well and the days will be easy. “If God is for us then who can be against us”, right? Everything he calls us to should be easily accomplished and void of challenges. And when that isn’t true. I look around wondering what went wrong.

Maybe that is what Nehemiah thought when he began to work on the wall. Because it did start that way. God cleared out many of the obstacles and Nehemiah prayed a lot. But then the work began. The actual clearing of the rubble and the laying of the stones. The back aching, mind-numbing work of building a wall. The challenges of getting the people to work together and of fending off their enemies all at the same time were overwhelming. Sound familiar?

These are the days of living in a world ravaged by a pandemic and political unrest; of giving up so much normal and learning new ways to navigate our lives; of taking care of our people and getting our work done and wondering how we are going to manage and if God is even at work in any of it. The world screams for us to be distracted; to focus our eyes on all the chaos and to become convinced that God is not for us in any of this.

And the same was true for Nehemiah. Life tried to distract him from what God had called him to do. People had other plans for him; they wanted to meet with him. They begged to be deemed more important than the building, the stacking, and the wall making.

But Nehemiah would not relent. He stayed up on that wall. He stacked the bricks. He bolted the gates. He encouraged the people, and he sent down word to all of the chaos.

I am doing a great work and I cannot come down (Nehemiah 6:3).

He just kept working. Lots of folks thought this wall he was building was nothing. They thought it didn’t matter. But here’s the thing. Nehemiah didn’t have his eyes on lots of people. He had his eyes on God. He knew that this was work the Lord had called him to do. He knew that it was holy. And he also knew that it wasn’t really about the walls anyway.

The work that God was doing among his people back then was not measured in brick and mortar or length and height. He was rebuilding a people from the inside out; rebuilding their hearts and teaching them what it meant to trust him again. The wall was not the great work. God’s presence with his people was the great work. God didn’t want the wall. He wanted the people.

And here I stand in this strange time with my own people, hands full of work and worries stacked precariously high, with these questions I dare to ask God about how hard these tasks are; about how to find the perfect way to get it all done and God whispers…

Are you looking at the wall or at me? The work is never really about the product as much as it is about your heart. So listen to how I lead you. See me even in the places where you think I cannot be. I am in the hard work, the small work, and the unseen work. I am doing a great work in you. I don’t want your perfect wall, I want your heart. I want you.

This year will continue to present its challenges. There is no magic spell that can return us back to the way things were. The work will probably keep being hard, the days might stay full of their own troubles and the computer may just stay stuck on the wrong screen for hours.

But here’s a truth I’m holding on to. God is still with us. He is building us in the middle of it all. He is doing a great work even as we struggle to see it; laying a foundation and turning over the soil of our hearts. The hard and rocky places of our souls are often where the Lord grows the best fruit.

So, may we lean in and let him keep working on us. And may we trust that, yes, he can even be Lord of these days of digital learning.

Walk with me [Jesus] and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace … Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. (Matthew 11: 28-30 Msg.)