'nothing' might not be as bad as you think ...

my friend will often sing these lines from the song ‘nothing’ by edie brickell & new bohemians ...

There's nothing I hate more than nothing
Nothing keeps me up at night
I toss & turn over nothing
Nothing could cause a great BIG fight

the song is talking about things from a relational standpoint. it’s so incredibly frustrating when something is clearly wrong with someone - particularly someone you love - but when asked what it is, all they say is ‘nothing’. we want to help. we want to fix. we want to be there. but we can’t do that if they won’t let us in.

then today i was thinking about how hard ‘nothing’ can be to deal with on a much grander scale. in our human nature, we want answers. we want solutions. we want to be doing. but what about when we pray and all we hear from God is nothing. we ask Him what He wants us to ‘do‘ and His answer is ‘nothing’.

it’s so much easier to be investing our time and energy into something with a clearly defined purpose and acknowledgement of our efforts, than to be working toward something with no guaranteed outcome. but God’s ‘nothing’s are not without purpose. the former may be a totally worthy and noble cause. but if God has called you to do ‘nothing‘ for a season, then you might miss the blessing while doing the ‘something’.

i think of moses. he was raised as pharaoh’s son - certainly a something. but then he spent 40 years in the desert, doing ‘nothing’ but leading his father-in-law’s sheep. it was there that God prepared and called moses to do a great something - leading the nation of israel out of slavery, through the desert, to the promised land.

i think of ruth. she lost everything, then gave up the promise of something better, in exchange for a life of seeming nothingness with her mother-in-law naomi. but it was there, in a foreign land, that God blessed ruth’s humble submission by bringing her a new husband, and ultimately using her to perpetuate Jesus’ lineage.

i think of david. he was anointed as the next king of israel, and yet spent his early years doing nothing but tending sheep, and then running for his life from some of his closest friends and family. after becoming king, a poor choice born of idle nothingness could have cost him everything, but God turned even that into something.

we must be careful not to get so caught up in our own somethings that we miss the somethings that God has for us. it’s hard not to be afraid of nothing, but we have to trust that our time and efforts - or lack thereof - are not being wasted.

just think ...

if moses had decided to do something other than nothing, he would have missed the burning bush. if ruth had decided to choose something over nothing, she would have missed out on boaz. if david had allowed the times of nothing to keep him down, he never would have been called a man after God’s own heart.

these stories of ‘nothing’ give us so much hope that God is up to ‘something’. just keep believing that God’s nothings are not for nothing.