Seeing Clearly

As a child, I was afraid of the dark. That is how I defined it at the time anyway. Looking back, I don’t believe darkness is what actually scared me. More precisely, I believe I was truly afraid of the unknown. I wasn’t scared of the dark. I was scared of what could be lurking in the darkness. The unknown.

The older I get, the more complicated the unknowns in life become. Every next step we take in life has some form of the unknown on the other side. I was reminded of this after a recent trip to Branson, Missouri with family.

As a reference for you, thick foggy mornings are rare where I come from. I can count on one hand how many times I have driven through thick fog since I was sixteen, which did not prepare me at all for my experience in Branson last fall.

We had just spent a day at Silver Dollar City with my husband’s side of the family when we took to the road to drive back to Northwest Arkansas. My husband is usually in the driver’s seat, but he got hit with a stomach bug right before we left, so I had to take over the wheel.

The sun had just gone down when the worst fog I had ever seen hit. To make matters worse, we were on one of the worst windy roads I had ever driven. Between the dark night and the thick fog, I couldn’t see two feet in front of the car. Thankfully, my brother in law was with us.

I asked him to pull out his phone and open the map app. I asked him to let me know when we were about to approach each curve and what direction the curve would take us. This is the only way we were able to make it home. We depended on this device the entire two-hour drive to warn us of exactly what was about to happen before we could see it with our own eyes.

In a world full of unknowns, knowing that my brother in law had access to this information was very comforting. He knew what was unknown to me, and he was going to help keep us safe.

Sometimes, I need to find comfort in the knowledge that God knows the unknown. We may be concerned with immediate unknowns right in front of us, but he is the Ancient of Days whose knowledge knows no bounds. He knows the future. He holds the future.

We will face affliction, but, because of our Savior, we are also on the winning side. While unknown curves are on the other side of our next steps, victory in Christ will also be waiting for us, even if we don’t see it until we get to Heaven. Life may not always feel like we are winning, but by putting our hope in Jesus Christ, our eternity is secure. That is a big victory that will be worth it all.

That is all I have for today. No great revelation, just some basic truths that bring me comfort in a world of unknowns. Basic truths that help me see clearly through the fog of unknowns.

The truth that God is good (Psalm 106:1). The truth that He knows even the unknowns of our future (Jeremiah 29:11, Revelation 1:8). The truth that no matter what troubles we go through, nothing can compare to what is planned for us in eternity (John 10:28, John 14:1-3, 1 Corinthians 2:9). The truth that it will all be worth it (Romans 8:18).