When We Can’t See God’s Promises Easily
When things are going smoothly in life, it’s pretty easy for me to see the work of God at play. Those moments are mostly easy. Most of life doesn’t look like this though. I want to be honest about some of the reality of where I’ve been with my faith over the past decade. In 2013 and the years following, I was in a really dark time. The honest description of this time is that I was so buried in grief and sadness that it felt almost impossible to see God’s work in my life. There were so many questions — why did some of my loved ones have to leave me? Why were they taken so early? Why was my friend battling Leukemia? Why was my aunt taken away? I could spend a whole day rattling off of the questions that I had. If we’re being honest, it wasn’t so much that I was angry at God, but I just couldn’t comprehend what was going on in my life. It was more than my brain and my soul could handle. I felt like I was in a fog, unsure of what was happening or where I was heading. More than anger, I just felt super disconnected. The love of God felt far away from me and my loved ones during that season. The thing about any kind of relationship is that when there’s distance, unless you take some sort of action to intentionally disrupt it, more than likely the distance will just grow and grow over time. This is basically what I did. I felt distant from God and I just kept letting myself get more distant. I don’t have shame or regret about that time really. I think things needed to play out as they did. Sometimes, distance makes the heart grow fonder (it turned out to be true in this case).
Very often, Christ-followers talk about God as a keeper of promises. I love this language and believe this to be true. But the reality of life in the dark times is that it can be difficult to see God’s promises playing out when you are stuck in the middle of a hard time - whether that is pain, sadness, grief, anger, etc. But hindsight is 20/20. Looking back now, it is so much easier to see God’s work in my life during that time, even while I was buried in my pain. Although I felt distant from God, God was always there. I look back now and see the way I was carried through those times. I was held, I was cared for, I was supported, and I was still standing at the end of it all. It was all God, all along. I can see now that most of my survival of that time was not because of me, but God’s protection over me. I was never alone, even on the days it felt like it. Doors and blessings continued to open for me, people continued to surround me with love and support daily, and I was safe. It was all God. When we think about God’s promises for our lives, I think most of us spend time looking forward - we think about the hopes, dreams and desires that we have for our own lives and our futures. I have a long list of hopes, dreams and desires that I name to God daily. When we orient ourselves to God’s promises only from a place of future desire, it can be easy to feel defeated when those things are not yet fulfilled. Sometimes, I look in the rearview mirror to get a different perspective. When I turn my attention to the past, I see the hand of God holding me. There is no way that I got through what I got through (surviving and thriving) on my own. I’m good, but not that good, LOL. It was all God. God fulfills promises and sometimes we forget if we spend all of our time focused on the unanswered prayers or unfulfilled dreams we have. It’s okay to keep naming those things. But take a minute to think about where you’ve been. Where are the places God showed up for you? Can you see more clearly now? You have always been held. Even in the darkest times. God goes into those places and gives us light to see the way forward. If you’re in a dark season right now, nothing I can say will make it better. But you should know that you are held.
My hope for God’s future promises remains alive because of what I’ve seen in my own life already. Our lives become a living testament to the work of God, especially when we can tune in to see it more clearly. God always makes a way.
I’ll leave you with this beautiful prayer of Teilhard de Chardin:
“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.”
