A PERSONAL REFLECTION ON “I Have Not Left You Orphan’s” Series":

I was driving once with my baby in the back seat, to a retreat in fact, in fairly treacherous winter storm conditions.  Along the way, while apprehensive of spinning off the road and meeting a tragic end, several memories were welling to the forefront of my mind: stories I’d heard of random people in the news, stories that had struck some inner layer of my heart, and all I could think as they ran through my mind was, ‘Whatever help they needed, they didn’t get it.  God didn’t provide for them.’  

I knew this didn’t align with God’s promises, but couldn’t see any differently, and the only prayer I could make out of that thought was, ‘God, here’s what I think about this. Help me know what I need to know to trust you again.’

And the answer I got is a somewhat difficult one. Part of me still wishes for the easier one, which would be to know exactly how God was at work in those people’s lives.  (How nosy of me…sheesh!)

Instead, I drove past a tree:  a huge gnarly oak with dark barren winter branches, a silhouette against this apocalyptic sunlight which was radiating from behind it.  

And this understanding accompanied it:  the tree looked like death (literally with its gnarly dark appearance and lack of leaves), and seemed to encompass all my feelings about my driving situation, as well as the ‘abandoned to tragedy’ projection I made onto the lives of these strangers.  But that unearthly light, fixed behind the tree, radiating through it like a spotlight through fog, was like God was pointing right at it:  ‘the tree is not dead’.  

It was as simple as that.  The tree looks that way, in a shockingly emotionally relatable way, but it isn’t so.  My vision doesn’t capture the whole story.  It put me in my place - it is not for me to know the personal ways God is at work in other’s stories, unless by their testimony.

I do know the way he’s worked in my life.  It’s not as though I’m blind to the goodness of God.  There are areas we are mercifully shown his goodness, and areas we are asked to trust. 

And I think that opportunity for trust is a mercy in itself - ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’ (Jn 20:29).  Can our faith grow if it is never tested?  In the end I believe it is not having the answers, but our certainty of his love which will satisfy the questions upon our hearts.  And that certainty will be not just a head certainty, but a certainty of the heart that is fully realized- because God’s love became tangible in our lives when we took a leap of faith, such that he could come through for us when, instead of shrinking from anything in which we feared he might not have our back, we took a risk and opened that space to give him a chance.