When You Are Still Inside the Chapter

What does it mean to trust God when the story doesn’t make sense? A reflection on abiding, resting, and trusting His character in the unfinished chapters.

Lately, I have been asking God for language.

Not really for myself. For my children.

As a mother, there is something particularly painful about watching your children walk through a story you don’t understand yourself. I want to be able to tell them where we are going. I want to explain why certain prayers haven’t been answered, why some things have taken so long, why doors haven’t opened, why relationships have changed, why provision can sometimes feel so uncertain.

I want to be able to look at them and say, “This is what God is doing.”

But most of the time, I don’t know.

And I don’t want to hand them religious answers just because I don’t have real ones.

I don’t want to tell them, “Everything happens for a reason,” and move on. I don’t want to teach them that if they have enough faith, declare the right things, or believe hard enough, everything will turn around. And I don’t want to tell them that following God means passively accepting whatever happens and calling it His will.

I want to give them something true.

I want them to know how to live with God when the story doesn’t make sense.

So I have been asking Him:

How do I teach my children to trust You in a story I don’t understand?

And somewhere in my searching for language for them, God began putting language to something in me.

I’ve been reading Genesis differently lately. Slower. Asking questions. Paying attention to words I have hurried past for years. And a pattern has begun emerging that is changing the way I understand both God’s heart and this long season we’ve been living.

The Boundary Inside Abundance

It begins in a garden.

I’ve always noticed God’s prohibition:

Don’t eat from that tree.

But lately I’ve been noticing what comes before it.

God doesn’t introduce Adam and Eve to creation by talking about what they can’t have.

He surrounds them with abundance.

Every tree.

Every seed.

Beauty.

Food.

Purpose.

Relationship.

His presence.

And then, within all of that abundance, He establishes a boundary.

You may freely eat.

Except this.

The boundary existed inside abundance.

After the flood, I noticed God doing it again.

He tells Noah that the living creatures are given for food.

Again, the language is expansive.

I give you all of this.

And then comes a boundary concerning blood and life.

Gift.

Abundance.

Boundary.

That’s the order.

When Abundance Begins to Look Like Scarcity

And suddenly I realized how differently the serpent frames God.

He doesn’t begin with the garden full of yes.

He points at the one no.

“Did God really say…?”

The serpent takes a boundary inside abundance and reframes it as evidence of scarcity.

Look what God won’t let you have.

And suddenly the entire garden disappears behind one forbidden tree.

I wonder how often we do the same thing.

We look at what hasn’t happened.

What hasn’t been provided.

The relationship we don’t have.

The door that hasn’t opened.

The prayer that hasn’t been answered.

The promise that still seems impossibly far away.

And slowly our interpretation of God begins to change.

Maybe He’s withholding from me.

Maybe He isn’t as generous as I thought.

Maybe I need to make this happen myself.

And that is where grasping begins.

Seeing Isn’t the Problem

Eve saw that the fruit was desirable. She took it and gave it to her husband.

The sons of God in Genesis 6 saw the daughters of men and took what they desired.

David stood on his roof and saw Bathsheba.

Then he learned the boundary:

She is Uriah’s wife.

And he took her anyway.

See.

Desire.

Take.

Grasp.

But then I look at Jesus.

Jesus saw too.

Jesus acted.

Jesus spoke.

Jesus healed.

Jesus released the kingdom everywhere He went.

He was anything but passive.

Yet He said:

“The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing.”

There it is.

The difference isn’t between doing something and doing nothing.

The difference is where I am looking.

The Tree of Knowledge says:

I see the outcome I want.
I decide what should happen.
I find a way to make it happen.

I grasp.

Jesus shows us another way:

I see the Father.
I receive what He is doing.
I participate with Him.

That is not passivity.

That is abiding.

So What Does Rest Actually Look Like?

I have wrestled with this question.

Because when bills need to be paid, “rest” can sound ridiculous.

When someone is sick, when a marriage is breaking, when the job hasn’t come, when the dream has been delayed for years, when the promise and the circumstances seem to contradict each other—what does it mean to rest?

Surely it doesn’t mean sitting on the couch doing nothing.

Joseph didn’t.

Even in prison, Joseph served.

He developed what had been entrusted to him.

He interpreted dreams.

He became trustworthy.

And when the cupbearer was released, Joseph asked him for help.

“Remember me.”

In other words:

Please get me out of here.

Joseph wasn’t pretending he liked prison.

He wasn’t calling imprisonment abundance.

He wasn’t passive.

But there were things Joseph could not do.

He couldn’t make the cupbearer remember him.

He couldn’t make Pharaoh dream.

He couldn’t manufacture the moment when Egypt would suddenly need the gift God had been developing in him all along.

And that, I think, is where rest lives.

Rest is not refusing to act.

Rest is refusing to manufacture what only God can give.

I Cannot Make Pharaoh Dream

I can ask.

I can knock.

I can work.

I can create.

I can apply.

I can budget.

I can make the phone call.

I can use the gifts God has given me with everything I’ve got.

But I cannot make Pharaoh dream.

Some parts of my story only God can bring to pass.

This has changed the way I think about faith.

We read Joseph knowing Egypt is coming.

Joseph didn’t.

We read Job knowing about the behind-the-scenes accuser.

Job didn’t.

We read Abraham knowing Isaac will eventually be born.

Abraham didn’t. He had a promise and the vision of the stars as a reference, but not a timeline.

We read the disciples knowing Sunday morning is coming.

They didn’t.

They lived Saturday.

And sometimes so do we.

Don’t Judge Joseph From Prison

I’ve told my children many times:

Don’t judge Joseph from inside the prison.

Prison wasn’t the conclusion of Joseph’s story.

But it was absolutely part of his life.

And that distinction matters when you’re the one sitting in the prison.

People have told us, “It’s just a hard chapter.”

I know what they mean.

But sometimes a chapter lasts seventeen years.

Sometimes you read someone’s story and one sentence says, “They lived in Tennessee for seven years,” and then the story moves on.

Seven years.

One sentence.

But when you’re living those seven years, they are thousands of mornings. Thousands of meals. Bills that have to be paid. Relationships that change. Prayers prayed again and again. Hope rising and falling. Ordinary Tuesdays when nothing seems to be moving at all.

A sentence to the reader can be a lifetime to the person living it.

Job Hadn’t Read Job

And that’s when I realized something almost embarrassingly obvious about Job:

Job hadn’t read Job.

He didn’t know about the conversation we are allowed to see at the beginning of the book. He didn’t know what was happening behind the scenes. He experienced devastating loss and tried to understand God from inside his pain.

We have information Job didn’t have.

Joseph hadn’t read Genesis either.

He didn’t know that one day we would read about the pit, Potiphar’s house, the false accusation, the prison, the forgotten promise, and Pharaoh’s dream as parts of one beautiful story.

He just knew he was still in prison.

For two more years after the cupbearer forgot him.

We are reading their completed stories while living in the middle of ours.

Living Inside an Unfinished Story

So I don’t want to judge my life from the middle of the chapter.

And I don’t want to judge God’s character from it either.

Scarcity in my circumstances does not mean scarcity in my Father.

An unanswered prayer does not automatically mean He is withholding good from me.

And a delayed answer does not necessarily mean I haven’t discovered the right spiritual formula yet.

Maybe there isn’t another lever to pull.

Maybe there isn’t another declaration to make.

Maybe I don’t need to figure out how to get God to move.

Maybe my invitation today is much simpler:

Father, what have You given me today?

Receive it.

What is mine to do today?

Do it wholeheartedly.

What do I need that I don’t have?

Ask Him plainly.

Is there a door I can knock on?

Knock.

Am I trying to force something because I’m afraid You won’t take care of me?

Open my hands.

Is there something that only You can do?

Let it belong to Him.

I am allowed to want.

I am allowed to ask.

I am allowed to act.

I am allowed to expect God’s goodness.

I am not required to manufacture the answer.

When the Chapter Makes Us Forget

After talking about all of this together one morning, our family took communion.

And suddenly “Do this in remembrance of Me” felt particularly important.

Because unfinished chapters can make us forget.

Pain tells stories about God.

Delay tells stories about God.

Scarcity tells stories about God.

And the ancient question still whispers:

Is God really good?

Look at what He hasn’t given you.

But Jesus puts bread and a cup in our hands and says:

Remember Me.

When I cannot understand the chapter, I can remember the Author.

When circumstances tempt me to question His generosity, I can look at the cross.

This is My body, given for you.

This is My blood, poured out for you.

Whatever else I don’t understand, I don’t have to wonder whether God is withholding Himself from me.

He already gave Himself.

While We Are Still Inside the Chapter

And perhaps that is where we begin when we’re living inside a chapter whose ending we cannot see.

Not by pretending it doesn’t hurt.

Not by calling scarcity abundance.

Not by sitting passively and doing nothing.

And not by frantically trying to make the next chapter happen.

We remember.

We receive.

We ask.

We knock.

We work with what is in our hands.

And we leave with God what only God can do.

Father, I don’t know what chapter I’m in.

I don’t know how long this part lasts.

I don’t know what You know about the pages I haven’t lived yet.

But I know Your character.

Show me what You are doing today.

Show me what is mine to do.

And give me the grace to leave with You what only You can do.

Maybe abiding isn’t doing nothing.

Maybe abiding is living fully, courageously, expectantly—

without ever having to become the source.

The branch bears the fruit.

The Vine supplies the life.

And while we are still inside the chapter, we can remain.

In everything you do -eat, play, and love- may it always be seasoned with Joy!