"In the land of unanswered prayer, we follow His lead."

In A Holy Experience, guest writer Jason Hague asks,

Why must we decide between happiness and sorrow, denial and despair, the joy and the aching?

Hague writes about his relationship with his autistic son.

On this journey with Jack, I have found treasures in my darkness, and the greatest of them all was this: aching joy.

The Lord taught me how to sigh in pain, how to weep in gladness, and how to trust during days of hope deferred.

It was not an easy road to walk. It still isn’t easy, and it isn’t safe.

Rather, it is a confounding country full of myths and mirages. Here, faith resembles denial, settledness looks like surrender, and hope is the scariest creature of all.

If you are with me here in this land, you know all about discouragement.

But look up, friend. The path before us is paved with secret riches.

To embrace it is to embrace the terrifying tension of God’s inaugurated but unfinished Kingdom: the already and the not yet, the treasure in the field, costing us everything but giving us even more.

It is the place where I thank God for my son, who is enough, and in the next breath, I beg God for more.

The road ahead is dangerous but not barren.

There is sustenance here, because Christ Himself is here, and He goes before us.

He walked this path already, this Man of Sorrows, and endured all that we must endure and more.

But He did it all for the joy set before Him.

In the land of unanswered prayer, we follow His lead.

He does not hover above us on the winds of false expectations.

Rather, He stands next to us with His own humble scars, beckoning us forward.

Read more here.