It is always hard to keep going and have hope, when you can see nothing that is in front of you. It is like driving through a densely foggy night. You drive as slow as you can, you try to turn your fog lights on, you squint, you do everything you possibly can to try to see what is in front of you. But you cannot do anything. You get frustrated and angry because you are just trying to get home or to some other destination. But it also is always a bit scary isn’t it? You do not know what lies ahead, where the road goes, what is in the road, or what could cross over the road. It is the same with life. Sometimes you feel like you are going 2 mph in life, you are trying so hard to grope for something; a future, a job, a lifestyle. You feel like you have your fog lights on, that you are constantly praying about it and asking God where in the world He wants you to go. But still, all the effort still results in blindness. You never know what is going to make you dodge or swerve in life, because you just cannot see. You plead and beg God to just let you see, to just let you know what is even two inches in front of you. But He does not respond. Silence. No answer. No help. No sight. So your left alone. In Silence. Blinded and frustrated.
Isn’t it so easy to get discouraged? You feel like yelling up to God telling Him to wake up, to start doing His job, right? But you know that it does not work like that, that God will only answer you according to His will. Doesn’t that seem selfish of Him to do that sometimes? He never lets us see what we need to see. I find myself saying that a lot. “God, if you just give me a glimpse of what you have in store for me, perhaps I will be a little more patient” or, “If I were God I would let me see what my future holds.” What philosophy we have sometimes! Christ was in the right when he scolded us for having so little faith (Matthew 8:26). As humans we often times do not understand this philosophy of being still and waiting on the Lord (Psalm 37:7), and having eyes through faith. All throughout life we are constantly using our eyes, constantly seeing, it is no wonder we have trouble having faith in what we do not see! Imagine being blind, not for life, but for only one day. Imagine having to keep your eyes closed a whole day and trusting someone or something to guide you around all day long. Helen Keller knew what this was like and she knew what knowing darkness and silence were like. She once said, “Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.” She truly knew what it was to be content in not knowing what may have been in front of her.
I am sure we have all played that game where one person is blind folded and another friend guides him or her through an obstacle course of some sorts. Or we have all dared to fall straight back onto someone who is waiting to catch us. I know I have never liked those games because I always wanted to be in control, I always wanted to be the one to see, and I rarely fell back on someone before asking them millions of times if they were truly ready to catch me. We all, including myself, are so easily scared to completely trust someone to guide us, to let them do everything.
Humans love power and control. It is in our human hearts. But there is a catch, as Christians we are no longer called to be apart of this world (Romans 12:2). We have been made alive and a new man in Christ (Romans 6:5-10). So we need no longer to think with our human minds or feel with our human hearts. We need no longer to be impatient with God. We can have the security of hope for the future (Jeremiah 29:11). We are not God, and we could never be God. I know if I were God, the world would either be completely messed up or we would all be hippies. We no longer need our eyes to see what is in front of us. We do not need to beg and plead God to show us something of our future. All of these feelings and actions can be replaced with one thing, Faith. When we are driving through that heavy fog, we have faith that we will be okay. Likewise, when we are going through life, we need to have faith that we will be okay. Even though people may have thought that Helen Keller must have been miserable in life due to her blindness, she saw her life in a whole different way. “I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.” She saw through the eyes of faith, so why can’t we? Patience.
You can have lots of it or none at all. Waiting on the Lord is one of the hardest things to do. Have you ever gone somewhere with someone and they tell you “Wait here”? So you do as you are told and you wait. For what? Why wait there? How many of us get up and start walking around or wandering off places all because it is too boring to wait for something. A something that we have no idea what it is. How many of us begin to think of everything that we could possibly be waiting for? Or how many of us count the minutes that go by? We all become impatient at some point. The same goes with waiting for God to show us a little bit more of what lies ahead.
But what about those who can go ahead and write out an outline of the rest of their lives? Why do they get to be special? Honestly, who knows. Only God, and he knows what is best for his children. No matter how hard we try saying “But God this is not fair!” will not make anything better. I once heard a phrase which really made me think and it was this, “How faithful are you even when no one is clapping?” How faithful are we when all we are doing is waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for what? Well you do not know. Do you still praise God during that time or do you get fed up with him? Do you still love him as much as you did before?
So it is now up to you. What will you do? You are driving in dense fog on a dark night. What you choose to do now, will determine your walk with God. Take the challenge. The challenge to wait, and be happy about it. Learn to dance in the rain. Learn to walk in the darkness. Learn to see life as if you were blind.
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