“We are tossed and driven on the restless sea of time; somber skies and howling tempests oft succeed a bright sunshine; in that land of perfect day, when the mists are rolled away, we will understand it better by and by.”
I was today years old when I found out that verse existed—in a song I have sung for as long as I can remember.
Every version of the song I have ever sung started with this verse:
“Trials dark on every hand, and we cannot understand all the ways of God would lead us to that blessed promised land; but he guides us with his eye, and we’ll follow till we die, for we’ll understand it better by and by.”
At least the refrain was familiar:
“By and by, when the morning comes, when the saints of God are gathered home, we will tell the story how we’ve overcome, for we’ll understand it better by and by” (Hymn by Charles Albert Tindley, 1905).
I thought of that song this morning when I read John 13:7.
“Jesus replied, ‘You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’”
There is a particular context to this verse in the Bible narrative, but it got my ponderer going.
How many times in my life has that been the case!
I don’t have a clue what God is doing, but I’m trusting that I “will understand it better by and by.”
There are so many things that happen in our lives that we chalk up to coincidence or chance. We think, “Well, how about that! I never imagined things would go that way.”
Sometimes those things are great and we celebrate them.
Sometimes those things are not-so-great and we wonder what went wrong.
And sometimes it just absolutely makes no sense—and that can make us a little uncomfortable, so we start trying to figure it out.
Sometimes we get answers; sometimes we don’t. That’s life.
But there is something within us that really wants there to be more to life than chance.
Here’s what I choose to believe: God is always at work behind the scenes. He’s always up to something. And often—in fact, more often than not—I really don’t realize what He’s doing. I’m just trusting that one of two things will happen:
Either I will understand it later, or I will reach a point that I no longer have a need to understand it.
God is under no obligation to let me know what He’s doing. That’s what faith is for.
Trusting in the dark. Resting in the silence. Leaning forward into the unknown. Taking the next step.
There’s something amazingly exhilarating about that kind of trust and so far I’ve survived every time I’ve had to exercise it.
If you’re reading this, you have also survived every step into the unknown. It’s a lot easier when you trust His unseen hand.
Be amazing today, my friend.
Postscript from the Discover Your Amazing team
Here are a few further items that came to mind during the composition of today’s post.
The first is from the life of Corrie ten Boom described in her book, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom:
“And so seated next to my father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, “Father, what is sexsin?”He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case off the floor and set it on the floor.“Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said. I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.“It’s too heavy,” I said.“Yes,” he said, “and it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.”
The second illustration that came to mind if from the incredibly popular (with children and their parents) cartoon, “Bluey.”
In an episode titled “Tina” from Season 3, Bluey and her sister ask their dad why they have to do what he says, and he replies with the classic, “Because I said so,” and when asked why again, he clarified “Because I’m bigger than you.”
This sets off a chain reaction in which the kids came up with a giant invisible friend, Tina, who made sure Bluey and her sister Bingo didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to. The parents played along for a bit until the kids were disgusted by their hygiene.
The mom took a minute to explain: “Kids, when we tell you you have to have a bath, or brush your teeth, or wash your hands, it’s because there’s a good reason to do all those things… Look, we’ll probably still say those things [because I said so] ‘cause we’re busy, but now you know what we really mean.” The kids spent the rest of the episode training Tina in how to brush her teeth and take a bath so she wouldn’t stink and her teeth wouldn’t fall out.
The moral of these stories is that we may not understand what or why we’re being asked to do something, but we can trust in a loving Father who cares for every aspect of our lives.
