The God of Yet

I was sitting on my back porch reading a book when I heard a thud. A cardinal had flown into one of the windows. When I looked outside, it was lying on the ground beneath the glass.

I waited a few moments, then went out to check on it. I sat down nearby. The little bird was breathing hard, its beak open. It could not have seen the clear glass, and now it seemed too stunned and frightened to move.

“Are you okay, little guy?” I asked.

I doubt my voice reassured it. To that cardinal, I was enormous. So I stayed where I was and watched with it for a while.

Life can feel like that. We are going along, reading the next page of an ordinary day, when something we never saw coming stops us in our tracks. A diagnosis. A death. A job loss. A family crisis. Suddenly, we are struggling to catch our breath, unsure what happened or what to do next.

The book of Psalms is full of prayers from people who have been stunned by life. They ask God, Where are you? How long? Why has this happened? They do not pretend that faith makes fear disappear. They bring their fear, grief, anger, and confusion to God.

Many of us have prayed those same prayers.

In Psalm 42, the writer asks, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” Then comes a remarkable turn: “Hope in God; for I shall yet praise him.”

Yet.

The circumstances have not necessarily changed. The questions have not all been answered. But “yet” leaves room for hope. It says that what has happened to us, painful as it is, is not the whole story. God has not left us alone in it.

I sat beside the cardinal a little longer. Finally, I reached out a hand. At that very moment, it flew away, back toward the trees and the other birds.

I cannot promise that every stunned moment will end as quickly as that one did. Sometimes we sit on the ground for a long while, just trying to breathe. But I believe God stays with us there. And when we cannot yet imagine finding our way forward, the psalms give us a small word to hold on to:

Yet.