Sometimes it is hard to live without answers. We want to know why so badly, we cry out to God in anguish. But it is not always in God’s plan to unveil the mystery of pain and difficulty. Sometimes it is the very foggy mist of the unknown before us that is meant to strengthen our faith.
Have you not had times like that? when you look back on a situation and realize there is no way you could have walked that path alone? I have. I find in the cloudy space of silence, when no answers are forthcoming, that I must trust more on God than in the brighter paths of understanding. I learn to listen more closely for His still small voice. I learn to seek more diligently His guiding hand to draw me through the shadows. I learn to trust more assertively the sufficiency of God’s grace to keep me till I’ve learned the truth His Spirit wants to reveal. And sometimes I learn to walk through the mist of uncertainty without ever learning why I’ve walked where I have walked.
“Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself in matters too great or in things too wonderful for me. Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me [ceased from fretting]. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever.” Psalm 131
A weaned child is satisfied. A weaned child is content. A weaned child no longer demands, nor does he fret; he does not wonder where his next meal will come from. He simply rests in the comfort of a mother’s arms. A child of God does not need to have answers to all the mysteries of God. A child accepts that which the Father sees fit to show him for that time, then trusts Him for what lies ahead.
© Hariette Petersen, SelahV Today, 2009
