The Ninth Hour

During high school sleepovers, one of my favorite activities was puzzles. My friends and I kept our local dollar tree in business. Almost every Friday night of my Sophomore year, we’d jump in her car and drive through the pouring down rain in the dark to buy enough puzzles to keep us busy for at least five hours. Most of them I have to admit had no more than fifty pieces and would have taken the average ten-year-old less than five minutes to complete. However, some of them were over a hundred pieces. These projects often took us over five hours just to complete one of them and we had to take brain breaks so that we wouldn’t start to lose our minds. When we first opened the box and poured the pieces onto my dining room table, I could hardly believe that they would actually fit together correctly and create the picture displayed on the box. All I could see was a chaotic mess of colors and shapes. I don’t know about you, but during this past year, my life has felt a lot like one of those giant puzzles. My dad was killed in a car crash in July of 2020. My parents and I were on our way home from a camping trip and as we came around a sharp curve in the road, a great big truck came rushing towards us from the opposite lane and hit us head on. My dad was gone before the car even stopped. Suddenly, my whole world was shattered into a thousand pieces and scattered across the table like one of my puzzles. All my hopes for the future seemed to have evaporated, and all I could do was watch and I wonder why. Part of me felt like it was my fault. I feared that I had done something terribly wrong and God was punishing me. We had been camping at the very site that I had held my first two ministry retreats, and I had been planning on bringing a group of girls up there again in only a few weeks to study the book of Esther and worship together. It’s a place where I’ve seen God move in miraculous ways in the hearts and lives of so many. God had given me a message from the book of Esther that I knew was going to bring hope to this new group of teenage girls. Then, my life took a turn and nothing made sense anymore. I remember laying in a hospital bed with a broken femur trying to cling to God’s promises and not let myself doubt his goodness.

“I want my daddy!” I cried out as tears streamed down my checks. I felt like God had abandoned me. However, that was because I couldn’t see the bigger picture. God is still in control and is still on our side even when life feels hopeless and out of control. Just like I wasn’t expecting my dad to be killed in a sudden car crash, Jesus’ disciples didn’t expect him to be arrested and hung on a cross like a criminal. In the gospel of Luke it says, “It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, ‘Certainly this man was innocent!’ And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things,” (Luke 23: 44 - 49 ESV). The twelve disciples watched in horror as the Messiah, the savior of the world, the redeemer that they had been promised by the prophet Isaiah was brutally executed. The world was engulfed in darkness. They were devastated. However, that was because they couldn’t see the resurrection. In three days Jesus would rise with the sun. He who conquered death itself would be the first of millions to rise from the grave.

A few weeks before my dad died, I had the strangest dream. I followed myself walking around and around in a circle with about thirty other people in the middle of a high school gym. Everyone around me looked as if they were in some sort of trance. They had this glazed over look on their faces and were walking with about as much enthusiasm as the walking dead. I began to look around the room until I spotted Jesus standing in the middle of the circle. He was frowning and when we met eyes, I wondered why he was so sad. Then, I began to look at the people around me again and became confused. I wanted to leap with joy and run to Jesus, but no one else seemed to see him. When I woke up, I brushed the dream to the side, deciding that it was complete nonsense until Jesus brought it back to my memory when I got home from the hospital after the accident. He said to me, “the world is asleep and I’m going to use you to wake it up.” God still has a plan for my life, and just as he used the darkness of the ninth hour on the day of the crucifixion, he’s going to use the pain and grief of our ninth hour too. I’ve already gotten the opportunity to share my story with others and watch how God has used it to speak to them and transform their hearts and lives. The Apostle Paul put it this way, “...we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them,” (Romans 8: 28 NLT). We have to trust that God is still good and he’s still working even when life feels dark and hopeless. We have to believe that he still has a beautiful picture he’s going to make out of the broken pieces that is greater than anything we could have ever hoped for or imagined.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about The C.A.N Sisters’ Ministry, leave a comment below, check out our website, or email us at cansistersministry@gmail.com.