Five Minute Friday — Teach
Every Friday, I join a community of bloggers for Five Minute Friday. One word prompt, five minutes. And I literally write it in 5 minutes. The prompt this week is … teach.
14 years ago, after our first 6 months of marriage, my husband served at Bagram Air Base alongside NATO allies and Afghan civilians who were translators, cooks, and employees.
On Sunday, the Taliban took over Bagram Air Base. While packing for the beach, we were filled with sadness and felt lost.
While my husband and I looked at this unfold, I started to ask God. What are you teaching me from this?
Social media is definitely not the place to look for the answer. Everyone wants to point the finger and place blame. Also, there are so many tributes, so many messages of shame from the veterans. Everyone is so sweet and well-intentioned about what the 20 years looked like in Afghanistan, but it changed us completely for our family. I felt this was something that had no easy inspirational response.
I needed my heavenly father. Teach me your ways, oh God. Please teach me how to hope.
24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:24–28
While there is still sadness, we rise in hope. We live in hope. That hope is in our Jesus, who intercedes for us day and night. He knows the situation, and he knows the beginning and the end. Teach me, God, to live in hope.
