Surely Your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life…
Psalm 23:6
Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness it’s blanket, when I fixed its boundaries and set in place its bars and doors, and I declared: ‘You may come this far, but no further; here your proud waves must stop’
Job 38:11
See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:18
But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
Matthew 13:16
We have no idea just how much grace we are sitting in. How our small, limited minds cannot even conceive or hold just how expansive He is; how extravagantly glorious, wildly creative, and completely unlimited by our understanding and choices He is.
Our news channels tell a steady stream of stories marked by sadness and discouragement for the future. Our newspapers tell rumours of social division and unrest, age-old tales of tribal loyalty between countries and classes, groups defined in all kinds of ways; age, money, language, culture.
Our vision is blinkered to a narrow range, limited only to the physical world of what we can see and hear right in front of us. We are aware of the losses and tragedies; death stealing our loved ones too soon, an unwanted thief with no regard for the countless cost and what is left behind. We are given more warnings than our minds can reconcile; of the chemicals in foods, dangers of plastics, the toxins of pollution and waste.
And so we know and we fear; bracing ourselves against the dangers for our children, our families, our societies and our physical world. We are afraid to let our children out to play, for women to go out alone in the dark, afraid for both the present and the future. Our vision grows smaller, believing that the facts we are fed are simply the truth, fear squeezing our chests, breath being held, limiting our movement, becoming anything but free. And it’s so slow and subtle that we barely even notice it.
But still…but still…He is always stemming the tide. He is committed to the freedom He chose for us and so He allows for our choices and for the outworking of consequences. Because He doesn’t want slaves, He wants children. But without announcement or any desire for credit, He won’t leave us alone. He still pursues the truer, deeper freedom that He designed us for, refusing to leave us to the broken outworking of our choices, chasing after us relentlessly with goodness and mercy; undoing the Fall, rewinding the cost, returning the path.
He is always stemming the tide. Stemming the tide by drawing a line beyond which the chaos of the dark waters cannot go. He calls a stop to death, despair and destruction, calling a clear decree that it goes no further. And He has the final word. Where death would choose to draw people into its dark abyss, taking more and more with it, drawing people into the despair of grief and hopelessness, unable to see an end and so surrendering to the sucking pull of it, Hope speaks. Hope speaks light. Hope speaks life. And Hope is a person.
And so somehow, somehow we keep moving forwards, drawn by something more even if we cannot put a finger on it, cannot wrap words around it. Even when we can’t discern the shape of it, don’t recognise the face of it or know the name of it…we still move to the sound of its Voice. Because this is the Voice that called us into life back at the beginning. The Voice that we respond to, that we move to, that forms us over and over again…with words that created us and moulded us from nothing, tenderly shaping us from the inside out. We cannot help but respond because this Voice is part of our DNA and to not respond is to work against the very fabric of who we are.
Blessed is he who has eyes to see. Instead of seeing darkness pressing in, to see the light pushing back. Instead of seeing how close we come to misfortune, to see how often we are pulled back from unseen brinks because of the steady Love surrounding us. Protected, without us even knowing how protected we are. Instead of seeing the precariousness of life, to notice instead the constant rise and fall of our breath as a rebellious salute to the Love and Life surrounding us that refuses to submit to loss and despair. Instead of seeing the coldness of winter to see the coming of Spring. It always comes. It always comes. Because nothing stays dead with Him.
For He breathes through everything, actively holding us together, giving us moment by moment as pure gift. And even death is just a return Home. Where He will make all things right, where scales will fall away from eyes, where restoration will be complete, where our heart, mind, body and soul – the whole of who we are – will be brought back into alignment with Him and what we were created for, right back at the start. Just loving and being loved by Him. There really is nothing to fear.
And He does all of this quietly, without claiming credit, without trumpet sound or announcement. Because He is love and His power is like no other. Like nothing we have ever known. He is the commander of winds, but gentle as a lamb. He is the shaper of mountains, but humble of heart. He is the holder of space, who hung on a cross. He is without ego and He is the King.