Faithfulness When Vision Fails

Perhaps you feel it too. Not to assume, but these days…

There are so many threats that seem to just attack on every side… the threats seem so big, and I am feeling very human, very helpless, and very at home. I’m grateful to have a home where I can wait in peace, but it’s beginning to feel like the fence is so high… how can I be of any goodness to the world when my very body has such an increased potential to carry germs that could wipe out masses of other human lives, to even threaten my own? The needed distance is humbling. 

I am finding that in all this–not being able to see or to be seen–I long even more for God to see me and for me to see God. I long to dwell safely in an understanding of His faithfulness that sometimes seems so slippery, hard to grasp. I repeated this morning in prayer, “God, remember me. Forgive me. Please do not forget me.” I don’t believe He’s forgotten me, or the world, yet sometimes it can feel that way. Who am I to even ask for God’s attention?

However, God was quick to respond. In my Bible reading this morning, these verses clung sweetly to my mind:

“Remember these things, for you are my servant; I will not forget you. I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you.”

Isaiah 44:21-22 (shortened a bit)

“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

Isaiah 46:4

“…what I have said, that I will bring about; what I have planned, that I will do.”

Isaiah 44:11 (also shortened)

These are all God responding to His people who stopped loving Him, who worshiped idols. Yet His tenderness persists. He remembers them, and He is faithful to them still. It’s hard to understand what these verses were about long ago, but the same God is my God. His character always stays the same. And in Him I place my hope.

He is the God who remembers and responds. Who loves us when we can barely love for ourselves. Who cries with us, who takes all of our complaints, whose ear is attuned to injustice, sickness, and desperation. He has not forgotten me, and He will not forget you.

All God’s peace this Holy Week.