if God will send His angels...

"God's got his phone off the hook, babe

Would he even pick up if he could?

It's been a while since we saw that Child

Hanging 'round this neighborhood...

If God will send his angels,

And if God will send a sign,

And if God will send his angels,

Would everything be alright?"

- U2, "If God Will Send His Angels"

Do you know what it's like to feel like "God's got his phone off the hook"... to feel like it's been a while since you've "seen" God hanging around your neighborhood? To at least some extent, most (if not all?) of us have been there. On that edge between despair and hope, unsure of whether there was actually something worth hoping for? Maybe you've flirted with despair. Maybe you actually spent time with despair. Maybe you're spending time with despair now.

Whatever the case, consider this: despair is the easy way out. It doesn't require much effort other than our giving into it. Hope is hard - it requires effort, will, and trust - and true supernatural hope (not optimism - because optimism and hope are very different things) is backed up by faith. Of course, faith's not easy for most of us, either, because we go from emotion to emotion, trusting our feelings more than we trust our God.

And it seems like we who claim some kind of faith are often looking for God to send us a sign - some kind of extra assurance that our hope is not misplaced, that everything will be okay, that we are doing the right thing, etc., etc.... Yes, I do this sometimes, too - you're not alone. ;-)  However, we can't, and shouldn't, rely on these "signs" constantly. We need to remember - and I have to remind myself of this frequently - that God is working within us - signs or no signs, feelings or no feelings - whether we feel like he's picking up the phone or not.