Never alone or lack

Fog has settled on the mountain this morning. Sometimes this offers little concern because soon the sun rises and the fog burns away. There are other times such an occurrence means the mountain residents must be vigilant and watchful because this mountain fog can be fickle. One must always pause to consider which fog has arrived, the casual one that wishes to say, “I’m here, don’t forget me,” or the stubborn one demanding you pay attention to it.

Consternation characterizes this fog. At times, the cover is so thick, visibility measures a few feet. It’s the type that causes you to stand still, to wait until it decides to leave. Lost is the usual sense of direction most often relied upon without thought. You know the terrain, the roads, the best routes, but they do not appear. If you must move, you move by memory, but slowly and cautiously. Without a watch, time is unreliable as your sense of it. There is no looking at the sun. Light decided to take the day off.

When this happens, you have been thrown off, detoured, unbalanced from the normal. Moving around becomes a watchful exercise like being in a familiar room with the lights turned off. You move by memory, not by sight. You sense where you are, but your relationship between your limbs and the objects in the room are tenuous. No longer can you maneuver by what you see.

Life works this way at times. We come to a place and time we do not know how to respond. Something new has appeared. Experience does not tell us what to do next. Something missing in our life skills repertoire causes us to sense loss. Life will thrust us into the unseen.

But we are never left alone.

King David reminded us of this when he wrote Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd; I lack nothing” (Psalm 23: 1, JPS).

Though this is not the common translation, the idea makes the meaning clear. For those who love God, there is no lack. God provides what we need, not always what we want. He remains beside us in those unbalanced times in life when the thick fog comes and settles in for a while, when our life skills do not provide a way forward, even cause us to pause. What may be needed, never wanted, is the hard testing requiring us to be reliant on God, to look up instead of around, to look inward and find what God placed there so we may know from Whom all things come.

To walk into the unseen, then, teaches us such a reliance, maybe not the first lesson faith imparts, certainly the most lasting. To come to, then live by, this trust means no matter what happens in this life, God provides.

Every Christian must somewhere along his faith walk ask the inevitable question, “If I lost everything I have, would I lack?”  Only faith can answer the question, and faith’s end can be a hard destination to see.