Fog

Nothing disturbs our sensibilities quite like the prayer that goes dark.  We once had a firm idea how we ought to pray and what we should expect as an outcome but then it all becomes whacked and we lose our mind over the epic disaster we face since we prayed.  We lose the game, we lose the house, we lose the daughter, we lose the marriage, we lose  the will to pray anymore.  Our expectation is that everything should work in a straight line.  Beginning and end all within the carefully orchestrated wishes we hold and yet it isn't.  We find ourselves staring at a great tangled ball of yarn that has no end to grab.  Our problem is that we have so many accounts in the Bible that wind up somewhere and we expect that too.  Job's health gets restored.  Jonah is spewed out of the fish.  Moses makes it out of Egypt.  Joseph is released from jail.  Peter winds up on the doorstep carefree.  But we forget about James martyred, Jonah stewing over the Assyrian revival, Moses pulled away from Israel just as the Exodus ends, John left upon Patmos and Noah stupidly drunk.  The brief moments when God works with us along a straight line  leave us discombobulated.  We assume that is how it always is to be.  It is our right to see things clearly, to be settled and on our way somewhere.  That is not the human experience though and it especially isn't so for Believers.  God leaves us in a fog for great stretches and does so decidedly.  We can't see our way out of our disappointment, our troubles, our frustration and we think something is wrong with us or wrong with God.  Faith is only established within the fog when you can't make heads or tails of your circumstance or God.  The Lord does not show Himself to you nor give you His "big plan" either.  Blindly you must go about your business believing in the Lord who built His life in you by giving up His life finitely in the public square.  There for all to see the love of Christ was established and decided in the heart of the Father who loved you first before you had a shred of interest in Him.    The only way you can live by faith is when faith is forced out of you; not book faith or classroom faith but actual faith played out in real life.  It is then, when the fog thickens and you are left alone to sort out all the things you hoped would come to pass that haven't that you begin to believe God as you should, as you can.  You have Christ in you, living through you and in that is great hope and promise.  For Jesus has already blazed the way for you.  He dangled from the tree with the world looking out at Him and no sign of the Father at any turn of His head.  All He could see were weeping women, crushed and hopeless men, crass and wanton soldiers,  perverse religious zealots and an agony that was unbearably cruel.  Yet there, in the fog,  Jesus Christ stayed fixed upon the Father and His determined faith is also abiding within you.  Rather than give in to the despair of the fog, fix your eyes upon Jesus who knows how hopeless life can be and has given you His faith to keep you going.

"The Lord has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud;    1 Kings 8:12 NIV