Seeing beyond the fog

It is very early morning.  Unable to sleep well last night, I went ahead and slid out of bed while it was still dark.  I turned on the lamp in the family room.  It appeared that dense black sheets were hanging over the windows.  I made a pot of coffee and wove my way through my scripture reading for the day.

I was sitting in a dark shrouded room.  And even before the faint dawning light, the birds began to sing. Even before I could recognize hope, God's Word spoke to my heart.  In the Old Testament, I read verses about God guiding through a narrow place.  In the New Testament, serving Him without fear.  And in the Psalms, how God breaks the grip of what makes us afraid.

How appropriate were those rays of light in a dark place.  It was no coincidence that I read these verses this morning, passages that were written down for me -- for each one of us -- centuries ago.  God's Word does that.  New every morning, fresh every reading.  Not to help me cope or to smooth over the rough places, but to strengthen and help me to see my situation differently.  I am not alone.

...even the darkness is not dark to You,
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with You.

                      Psalm 139.12

I looked up from my reading, and it was as if the thick dark curtains were replaced with pale white ones.  The dawning light was defused by a dense surrounding fog.  I couldn't see anything beyond the windows. But even in that kind of blindness, I know what is there -- the porch, the steps, the little dead tree by the driveway, and the house across the street.  I don't have to see them in order to know their presence.

And He is here too.  I don't have to know God's purposes to trust Him in them.  Sometimes there is severe grace in not knowing too far ahead, sometimes that is how God protects us from distractions or from fear. His thick grace is like that impenetrable fog that is not so impenetrable afterall.  And that which sought to bring me down strengthens me instead.

I just need to seek Him through it.  And trust God for the blue skies and His mighty purposes hiding powerfully underneath.

...that we,
being delivered from the hand
             of our enemies,
might serve Him without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before Him
all the days of our life.

                           Luke 1. 74-75