Postcards from the Edge | A Letter to Hurting People | Revelation 2:8-11 | Week 3

"This Christmas I got my wife an Instant Pot.  It's a modern twist on the old pressure cooker.  It essentially works the same way----the top seals on there pretty tight.  Inside there are two things that happen:  heat that starts to buildup and steam that is released.  You can put in a whole frozen chicken and in three minutes it'll pop out to be dinner for you!  It's awesome!  Maybe not, don't try that at home.  It's a little nerve wracking with this 'bomb' you have in your kitchen.  We turn it on and my wife, Kelly, backs up, and all of the kids have their biking helmets on when she's cooking with it.  It's a little bit crazy.

I think sometimes life feels a little bit like an Instant Pot, doesn't it?  It presses in on us, and the heat gets turned up, and the steam gets released.  Sometimes in those seasons we have questions for each other, we have questions for God.  We ask God things like:  God, do you see?  God, do you care?  God, are you going to do anything?  God, in this situation that I'm walking through right now, what do you want me to do?  Sometimes the pressure situations can seem small......it's a child that won't behave, or the job situation that's not working out exactly the way you wanted it to.   But sometimes it feels like you're just in the thick of it and the temperature keeps going up and up and up and up.   The news from the doctor isn't good.  The relationship is falling apart.  It just feels like the pressure is just building.  What do we do in situations like that?  I sometimes think that as the Church, we're not good at talking about lament and grief.  Some seasons of life just aren't fun.  Can we admit that, even though we're in church?  Sometimes it feels like the pressure is just getting turned up...."