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
