Who will move the stone for us?

In my prayer times this week, I've been telling the Lord that I feel at the end of my resources; that I feel I need someone stronger to help me/us shift the obstacles as I face two seemingly impossible situations - one with our house in Scotland and the other with my lack of a house here in Spain. So an Easter devotional, emailed to me yesterday by a friend, really caught my attention, because it was about some women who were asking the very same question.

In Mark 16: 1 - 4, we read a short account of three women, two Marys and Salome, who - after an emotionally stressful week -were making their way to the garden tomb. I can only imagine how grief-stricken and disappointed they were feeling. Despite all that had happened in that emotionally charged week, despite all the things that Jesus Himself had said about dying, perhaps they'd been hoping that it wouldn't really come to that.

But it had: there had been no eleventh hour reprieve, and Jesus was dead now. Their loss was real and painful, and so they were making their way to the tomb to anoint the body for a proper burial. And as they walked, they were asking each other, "Who will roll away the stone for us?" because they knew that they weren't strong enough and were incapable of doing it themselves.

That's what I've been asking this week - with regard to both my Spanish and my Scottish situation. "Who can move away these obstacles that, despite three months of time and effort, I am not strong enough or capable enough to do for myself?"

Of course, in the Bible passage and in the devotional sent to me, when the women get to the tomb, they discover that the stone has already been rolled aside. God has been at work, even when the women were unaware of it.

This morning I asked the Lord whether the experience of those women is something that I can take as a promise for myself. Is He already working in the background to remove the challenges that right now seem insurmountable to me? Right now, I'm only seeing the lack of breakthroughs, the huge "rock" in my path, and I'm asking, "Who will move this huge obstacle out of the way?"

There's a Bible verse, 2 Corinthians 5 vs 7, that says we walk by faith and not by sight. I'm very aware of not walking by sight at the moment: there seems to be no way forward, no end in sight. This morning I read another devotional that was about clinging to the Father's hand, even when the journey feels overwhelming and the path ahead of us is veiled in uncertainty; it was about trusting that the Lord really is guiding our steps, even when those steps start to feel random to us.

"Though you may not know the way you should go, you do know the One who is the Way," wrote the author... and, "Talk with me about your uncertainty, your fear of making wrong decisions."

I'm part of a mission that is known worldwide for placing value on the priority of hearing and obeying God's voice. I believe that one of the most important things we can teach our children and youth is how to recognise the voice of God...

Yet, after three months of seeing no breakthrough in these two housing situations, it's easy to start wondering if you've misunderstood what you heard and to be concerned that you might be making some wrong decisions along the way.

One decision that can never be wrong, however, is the choice to keep clinging to God's hand and to walk step by step with Him.

When I was googling pictures of the tomb - to illustrate this blog post - almost all of the pictures showed a tomb with a large stone rolled to the side, exposing an open doorway and the evidence of a risen Jesus. It was hard to find a photo that showed the stone as an obstacle still blocking the doorway. We rightly focus on the events of that Sunday morning and the victory that we will celebrate this coming Easter weekend. We don't like to dwell on the events of the Saturday, when death seemed final and the tomb was tightly sealed.

Right now, I feel as if I'm living through that "Easter Saturday," where the stone is still a weighty barrier and there's been no exciting miracle yet... All that I know to do is hold God's hand as I continue this rather perplexing journey.