What you see above is a highway built into the side of a mountain. To me, it looked like a precarious perch. We drove on it anyway, but kept our eyes closely on the road. Sure, we like to be able to trust the engineers who built this highway–and to trust our driving abilities–but there are times I just have to trust in God and move forward. Humans are fallible. God is not. Maybe it feels sometimes that He is, but He has proven over and over again that He can be trusted. His ways are not always our ways–maybe they aren’t even often our ways–but I’ve found in the past that His ways are directed by His knowledge. Our knowledge is always incomplete.

Has there been a time in life when you felt as if you were hanging onto a slender thread of hope and didn’t know how much longer you could hold, that God had let you down, failed, turned His back on you? Have you felt that God finally decided He’d had enough of you and that you were no longer worthy of His care?

Some of my friends have so much faith that they seem to never doubt even when life is crumbling around them. I would love to count myself among them but I can’t do that in good conscience. There have been times when I knew God was there but I thought maybe I wasn’t having enough faith for Him to use me. Only after those times, while looking back, did I realize that God was working to build my life into something else, something more. He has the long-term plans. I only have short-term, for the most part.

I shared this picture a few weeks ago. If you cannot see it clearly, it’s a picture I took of a little tree growing up through a rock in the water. Right now I’m thinking that sometimes this tree symbolizes my life. The rock is the state of the world–seems pretty difficult for spiritual growth, isn’t it? But there is power and nourishment coming from the river, and despite all hardship, life thrives. We don’t do this ourselves. God provides the life.

God works in our lives sometimes despite our lack of feelings of faith. He is God. He isn’t tossed around by the whims of our emotions. I don’t cling to my emotions–feelings of faith, feelings of love, feelings of strength–for sustenance. God works in my life no matter the state of my emotions during moments of doubt or fear, or even moments of joy and hope. God is the bedrock of our lives.

I realize there is a lot of conflict going on for many of us right now. We don’t know what direction our country is going to take, and we tire of the battle, the anger, the hostilities. Some of us have personal lives that appear to be turning to dust. We’ve lost so much and it seems we just keep losing more. How much more can we take?

Just remember that it takes a lifetime to become what God intends for us to be. A lifetime and more. He is honing us to His plan, and He has us in His hand. In the end we will look back on our lives and be able to say, “Oh, so that’s what was happening there! I get it now. Thank you, Lord!”