I don’t know how you are feeling, but I am feeling a deep sense of frustration at not being able to live normally and move on in my life. In many ways things are much easier for me than they will be for others, but still I am finding it difficult. I can only begin to imagine how hard things are for some at this difficult time of lockdown and uncertainty.
I went for a walk to try and feel that at least I had done something today and to try and ease the pressure I was feeling inside. I’m talking about the type of pressure that comes from trying to get a six foot 15 year old son to get up off his bed and do something! Deep frustration ensued! Anyway, while I was on my walk I was thinking about what the Bible has to say about these things, times when all you can identify is a strong feeling of unease or annoyance, but it’s hard to get out all the things that are causing it. In my mind I settled on Romans 8:25 –
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
That’s how I have felt today, really. A lot of groanings inside, but difficult to identify all of it except that it feels like a big ball of frustration! It comforted me to know that even if I can’t get it all out, the Spirit knows and is interceding for me. We are living in an imperfect world where for the time being we will experience frustration to different degrees.
A few verses before the one above, Paul had been describing the current condition of all creation as it groans as if in childbirth waiting for the new creation. Paul includes us in that sentiment, saying that “we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (v23). Perhaps most encouragingly back in verse 18 he states:
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us.”
This life is not what it was created to be. We will always experience frustration in one way or another, Covid or no Covid, but even if we don’t feel like it at present, we can praise God that our Christian hope is real and certain and that even in the depths of our hearts He hears us and is attentive to our innermost groanings.
Faltering Steps of Faith 