Hope

Faithfulness Revealed

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There are many people who love looking at the clouds. Seeing their metamorphosis and witnessing their slow movement across the sky can be a sight to behold. Observing their shifts in color and how they signify changes in the weather can be a wonderful reminder of the intricacies of God’s seasonal design. Often they simply confirm to us the bigness of God, and our smallness in comparison.

The truly memorizing images of clouds are often the ones that obscure the light of the sun. These are the sunsets and the sunrises that capture our attention. They are the pictures posted on Instagram and fitted for postcards. The combination of clouds and light paint a picture that otherwise we would not see. Although covering the face of the sun, the resulting image often renews our appreciation of its light.

The same can be true in our Christian life. When God seems the most hidden, when the color of the clouds portend a storm up ahead, these are often the times where in retrospect we are most appreciative of the light of His Word (Ps. 119:105). His power pierces through the darkness to create beauty that we otherwise would not see. Just like the shifting clouds eventually move to reveal the brightness of the sun, so our own troubles pass and reveal the goodness of God’s purpose for us (See Rom. 8:28).

This can be hard in the moment. When the clouds appear on our horizon, when they seem to keep us hidden from God’s view, it can be difficult to remember that it is not our ability to see God that determines whether He is at work. The clouds may temporally conceal His majesty and goodness from our immediate view, but He is still the same God as when all seems right with our world. His light will break through the clouds, and His grace will sustain His children until that time as His purpose is revealed.

Or as Charles Spurgeon wrote:

O thou poor, distressed soul, who once lived in the sunshine of God’s face, but art now in darkness, remember that He has not really forsaken thee. God in the clouds is as much our God as when He shines forth in all the lustre of His grace.

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Hope

The Unknown Tomorrow

Like many people, I often struggle with the sin of worry. I used to tell people that I was a “champion worrier” until I realized that this was something to be ashamed of rather than proclaim. I know men worry, but it seems like it is an affliction that disproportionately targets women. I’m prone to believe that it is an evil contortion of our God-given gifts of nurture and concern. Somehow Satan convinces us that caring equates with anxiety – even the thesaurus draws parallels between the two. In reality, if we truly cared, we would be more than willing to trust our loved ones and our future to the concern of our King – who does a much better job of providing than we ever could.

As I have fought the battle against worry, one of the things that I remind myself is that I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. James 4:12-14 makes this point very clear. We should be careful in arrogantly crafting expectations for the future, because tomorrow may turn out much different than we expect. Instead of trusting in our own plans, we should seek to follow the plans of the One who holds the future, and rely on Him to bring us what we need.

This is all Scripturally sound, but I’m afraid that I often think about this in the negative. In other words, in my mind, tomorrow may be filled with doom and gloom so having expectations of future success may be misguided. This make sense because the context of the passage implies such a situation. However, recently I’ve been reminded that not only are the interruptions of our plans anticipated by us, but so are the unexpected blessings. We don’t know what tomorrow will hold in terms of the challenges we will face, but we also don’t know how God may provide in unforeseen ways. The good and the bad of tomorrow is unknown, which is why I must not trust in circumstances, but in the One controls them. He is good – and regardless of what the future holds – He is faithful through it.

In an age where we have a wealth of information at our fingertips, it can be hard to not know even know the details of the next day. But there is One who does – and His plans for our future will always be better than the ones that we can devise (Rom. 8:28).  And we may just be surprised by the unexpected ways He provides.

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