He sees what we don’t…

Early morning. Freezing-rain.  Typical random January weather in North Carolina. The possibility of slick roads delayed the start of school for two hours, so I waited until the sun started coming up before venturing out.  On the way to start the day in my 2nd grade classroom, I hadn’t driven half of a mile down the road from home when a dark silhouette darted close to the road, paused, and then moving as quick and as silent as a bullet, streaked across the misty road.  A deer. I wasn’t surprised by this; it’s pretty typical to see a deer crossing the road at that time in the morning here in NC, but the freezing rain coming down made visibility a little less than usual. I knew that it would have been easy to have hit that deer had I been a few seconds earlier out the door.  I silently thanked God for His safety and then just as quickly forgot what had happened, turned up the music on my phone, and focused on the slow-blues gospel piano song…

That’s pretty typical, right? It’s pretty easy to encounter something that we know could have changed the trajectory of our day, or even our life, but just as soon as it passes, we thank God for His protection, and then we move on…

“And though you may see a valley

He sees the mountain you’ll be standing on

When all you can see are the tears falling down

I’m so glad He sees what we don’t.”

The song filled my heart and pricked my thoughts:  God sees so much before and behind us. We don’t always understand it and it may even seem like God is not listening to what we want or that He has forgotten to provide for us.  

Focused on my own thoughts and the music, I drove on auto-pilot. But another mile down the road, it happened before I even realized what was going on: black ice. The tires on my car caught and slid.  I was on it before I knew what it was. I had corrected the car really even before I realized what was going on. It happened so fast that I could only understand what it was once I had passed over the slick spot.  

It’s like that in life, isn’t it? Things aren’t always clear.  “We see through a glass, darkly,” (I Corinthians 13:12) the Bible says.  Our vision in this life is muddied, our sight only sees so far over the next hill. But His vision is much sharper than our own and His plans are far above anything we could imagine. Aren’t you glad He sees what we cannot?

• God sees what is best for us:  

It is easy to make plans and imagine how we think our lives will turn out. We can prepare and plan for our perfect family, our perfect house, our perfect career. But that does not mean that it is God’s plan for us. We can pray for years for something that we hope for, a baby, a man, a healing, or simply direction in what we think is God’s calling in ministry, and still end up with what we think is nothing. That job offer may fall through, the man we thought would be there forever may walk out the door, we may feel as though God is withholding something from us, but he sees that what we thought was the best thing for us would have been the worst and we could not handle that heartache. As our prayers are told no or are told to wait, he is preparing us for something even better. Everything that we go through as we walk closer with Jesus is preparing us for His work in our life and our eternal life dwelling with Him in glory.

Romans 8:28 – “And we know that all things work together for good to them that God, to them who are called according to His purpose.”2

• God sees the future:

I can remember being in my early 20s and wondering about how my life would turn out. Am I making the right career choice? Am I dating the right person? Is there such a thing as regrets? It’s all enough to cause anxious living in anyone. But God sees. He sees exactly where each of our decisions will take us. Each moment that we walk on this Earth, God wants us to just keeping putting one foot in front of the other. In the book of 2 Corinthians, we are told that “we walk by faith, not by sight.” We may not see where our next step will land, but when we have trust in God’s plan, we know that He sees the next turn in our path. We could almost be up the mountain, but we can’t see it through the fog. God sees how things will end. He sees whether our next step will take us lower into the valley or higher on the mountain.

2 Corinthians 5:7 – “For we walk by faith and not by sight.”

• God sees into the hearts of every person:

In the book of 1 Samuel, when Samuel went searching for God’s anointed king, God reminded Samuel that He doesn’t look at what is one the outside of a person. “But the Lord looketh on the heart.” God sees inside each and every person, seeing their intents, their truths; where they need healing and what they actually believe. As we go through life forming relationships, as people come into and out of our lives, all we can do is live by faith. Each one of us has opportunities to make choices of who we want in our life. When we offer someone that choice out of the love of Christ and after prayer, we have to leave that choice to the other person and be at peace with their decisions. We might be sure that someone is saying one thing and doing another, but we cannot change what they do. We cannot heal someone who denies there is a problem. We cannot keep someone who has already left. All we can do is leave the person in God’s hands and continue in prayer that God will show us the next person to bring into our life.

Proverbs 15:3 – “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.”

Prayer:

Dear Heavenly Father,

We don’t always understand Your ways and it can be difficult to trust that You know our next step that will fall. But we know that we can trust in Your promises listed in Your Holy Word. You know the way we should take and only You can work all things together for our good. You can take our mistakes, our regrets, and our mess-ups and turn them into beautiful trials for Your glory. Help us to remember that You are higher than any problem we face and that the mountain may be unseen, but it will come to us again one day if we keep walking in Your grace.

In Jesus name,

Amen