Out of the Fog

What a long, hard winter it has seemed.

Has it to you?

Lousy weather, a string of overlapping sicknesses, chronic pain, and caring for a loved one with rapidly advancing Alzheimer’s is not the best recipe for success in the pursuit and procurement of happiness during the physically darkest months.

(Always winter, and never Christmas, as C.S. Lewis described Narnia.) Just cold and dark and dull. Nothing to look forward to.

I feel like I’ve been wandering in a dense, chilly fog of unanswerable questions and unanswered prayer.

Oppression.

Sometimes the faith thing is hard.

I wish it were easier.

I wish God would just slice through the veil and let us SEE.

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.”

But I can’t see his face through the fog.

***

Last Sunday morning, I was cozy in bed with my coffee and devotional book.

“Kim! Kim, come down here,” my husband called.

“Is it mandatory?” I whimpered.

“Oh, never mind,” he gave up.

So of course I stomped downstairs.

Frigid air was pouring in the front door. My husband was out on the porch, looking at this:

 As we watched, thick yellow bands of light pierced through the heavy fog. It had been rainy and overcast for days on end. 

Then, this:

These iphone pics don’t begin to do the sight justice. They don't capture the vivid contrast of color.

It was intense.

A day or two later, I ran into a friend who’s battling a debilitating illness. In spite of a daunting diagnosis, she is bravely hanging onto faith. Actually, her faith is growing stronger and stronger in spite of it.

When I asked her how she was doing, she told me that she wished she could still do something she did before her illness. (Go for a walk.)

But then she immediately shifted into telling me about what had happened to her on Sunday morning. She, too, had been in bed with her devotional book, when she glanced out her bedroom window. She said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Big yellow beams of light were streaming through the branches of a bare tree, as if God were above with his hands outstretched.”

“We saw it, too!” I told her. From several miles away. A completely different vantage point.

A sign.

Later, we exchanged pictures. She had drawn this in her journal:

Sometimes it’s hard to see God. Where are You in all of this mess? we cry.

God seems silent. The fog of unknowing remains. We stumble along in the dark, tripping over our doubts and fears.

It is hard to keep looking up into impenetrable leaden skies.

But, in an instant, God breaks through.

He always breaks through.

The light of His truth slices through the darkness like a saber, scattering the obscuring fog of uncertainties.

I AM.

***

“Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’?  Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”                 (John 16: 19-22)

“A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me.

 Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." (John 14:19-20)

(This one's for Karen. See the last comment on previous post.I needed a little encouragement!)