It’s hard to look up when you’re lying prostrate. Sometimes, it seems impossible. If confusion, hurt, and anger are pummeling you without mercy, you may be very tempted, when you do look up, to shake your fist.

Suddenly, God is not the God you thought you knew, and you’re not sure why. Is the situation too big for him to handle? Has he made promises he can’t keep? Has he gone to sleep or turned his back on you at your moment of greatest need?

However impossible the task may seem, your job now is to lift your head. As you do, raise your voice if you must, but not your fist.

The God you thought you knew is past knowing. You will never, with confidence, be able to predict what he is going to do in any given situation. You will never know anything of him that he does not choose to reveal to you.

Yet, he invites you to know him better. He offers to reveal himself, if you will seek him.

Then you will call on me
and come and pray to me,
and I will listen to you.
You will seek me and find me
when you seek me with all your heart.
(Jer. 29:12-13)

Sometimes, when he seems the most hidden or the farthest removed, he is preparing to show you more of himself than you have ever seen.

Let your situation prompt you to turn toward him, to seek him now.

This mini-post is quoted from Things Fail, People Fall, by Deborah Brunt (Birmingham, AL: New Hope), 53-54.

Image by Moshe Harosh from Pixabay

See also

• God who has wronged me
• Waiting for hope
• A future filled with hope