“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 43:19 (NIV)
Our family just enjoyed a wedding weekend filled with good food, cute little kids, a gorgeous bride, all the customary emotions, and all the fatigue! The next day we said our final goodbye to our girl who will be settling into the life of a military wife on the opposite coast. This is a whole new experience for us. So, as I write, if you are expecting an introspective post about marriage or family or emotions you might be disappointed — or may be relieved — depending on what you like to read.
What is actually on my mind is a little piece of wedding advice that recently came across my path. Someone had polled hundreds of wedding guests and discovered that the number one gift that a wedding couple can give back to their invited guests is to shorten the number of minutes between ceremony and food to single digits. Apparently, once the Mr. & Mrs. are pronounced, wedding guests are suddenly famished and start looking around for food!
In our case, I knew that Alyssa and John had planned for the feasting to begin immediately, and it did! They were barely down the grassy isle and the announcement was made as to where the dinner line would form. Here is where this is all going — before and during the ceremony, I hadn’t been aware of the caterer setting up the dinner at all, even though the serving tables were arranged only fifty feet away. The catering ladies had come on the property with such stealth, and worked in the shadows of the porch so silently, that when the announcement was made, my inner wedding coordinator alarms went off. The first thing I did was look in the direction where I knew the dinner would be staged with the fear of seeing empty tables. But, NO! Everything was hot and ready, having been silently prepared for us in plain sight, but completely without our notice.
Speaking of working unnoticed, the subtitle for our next Women of the Word study in the book of Esther is When God Works in the Shadows. I don’t mean to be intentionally irreverent by drawing a parallel between the work the catering ladies did this weekend and the work that God does in our lives, but sometimes those simple analogies just hit the spot.
Maybe you’ve gone through a season where you just didn’t feel God’s presence in your life. Maybe you felt quite alone, as if God was extraordinarily distant. Maybe you worried about a great many things, believing you would glance over your shoulder only to find empty tables that would confirm your greatest fears that God had indeed left you to yourself — no longer interested or involved in your life. Maybe you feel all these things right now!
During the time of Esther, the Hebrew nation had been carried into exile and had lost so much — their land — their place of worship — even their identity as they were integrated into other nations. For the most part, I’m sure they didn't feel God’s presence in their lives. To confirm this general sense, it’s noteworthy that the name of God isn’t even mentioned in the book of Esther. But, just like the stealthy caterers working on the covered patio, God was there, setting things up and orchestrating people, places, and events for the benefit of His beloved.
In our lives, we often don’t see or appreciate the hidden hand of God until we look back with perspective. That is when we understand the work He has actually done on our behalf. Acknowledging and celebrating what God has done in the shadows of our lives helps our faith to flourish in the present as we realize that God is always working, even when we can’t (or won’t) see Him, or notice Him, or feel His presence.
As a personal update, I can already look back with perspective after five months of treatment and see how God has been silently arranging things in my life to show his steadfast love toward me. In my opinion, any type of medical treatment is usually a yucky season, but if we can see the hidden hand of God it encourages our faith.
I’ll give you one small example — on Monday I started a new-to-me treatment, which I will continue for the next five weeks. When I called to make the appointment, I found out that the very day I would need to begin treatment would be the first day ever this treatment would be made available at our local hospital in Fruitland, saving me a trip to Nampa or Boise. It’s a very small thing, but I’m just going to accept it as the hidden hand of God working unnoticed in the shadows of my life.
Maybe you would benefit from pondering the hidden hand of God in your own life in the recent past. You may find that it’s a real faith booster!
My Love & Blessings,
Sue