Last night, I was so bummed the sky was overcast. I really was. How is it that almost every night, I wander out and see stars, but when there’s something over-the-top, like this “Christmas Star” or an eclipse, the sky always seems to be too cloudy to see it, even for a girl named after literal space?
I lamented. But lament is a beautiful thing, because it means we take our wounds to God, and ask Him to heal us. And sometimes explain Himself to us. I brought my grievance to the Throne last night, and walked away understanding the metaphor…
Sometimes God hides Himself. Now, none of us like this idea. Maybe it’s partially because we’re grown ups, and we forgot how to play “Hide-and-Seek”. We want everything we want, and we want it in this exact instant, and if we don’t get it now, we feel slighted… because we, grown-ups, tend to think the world revolves around us, and we’re racing against our impending expiration date (and none of us know when that is).
But do you remember how to play “Hide-and-Seek”? Do you recall the welling up of anticipation. Partly because we were playing with friends, so we trusted them to still be there when we found them, and that they wouldn’t cause us any harm in their hiding or absence or discovery. Maybe the problem is, we don’t trust God to be our Best Friend. We don’t trust that He’s still there when we can’t see Him. We don’t like the anticipation because we want the gratification, not realizing the gratification is better because of the longing-then-finding.
King David compared his longing for God like a deer panting for water. Sometimes, when God hides Himself we feel parched. We feel scared and abandoned. But God isn’t gone. He hasn’t even taken His eyes off of us. He is simply veiled from our’s for a short while, so we can learn to long, and in the finding, be surprised by greater joy.
If God, like that elusive star I’ve waited with anticipation to see, seems hidden or even absent from you right now, dear one, then please remember that sometimes His hiding is for a greater revealing, and that He is still nearer than your own skin (if you are one of His).
I am sure that, in the wisemen’s travels, they had one or two cloudy nights where they couldn’t press on in their journey… but one thing I’ve learned is that if I spend my entire life focusing on destinations, I will miss the travels… and sometimes we don’t see our own goal met at the end of our journey on earth, so if we miss the traveling, we miss everything. I sure hope those wise men had some fantastic fireside conversations and restful evenings on the journey, because cloudy nights can either feel like robbery of a blessing, create anxiety in our impatience, or we can look for the other blessings God has for us right here… right where He is hiding Himself.
God bless ya’all.
Space 12/22/20
