How Will He not Also?

For many years now, out of my kitchen window, I've observed winter's bare, snow laden trees turn into a canopy of flourishing green in spring . . . never doubting that spring would come. If seasons bear the fruit of God's promise, how will He not also keep His promises to us?

 

I’m making my way through Ann Voscamp's book very slowly. Personally, I would prefer shorter chapters, but this way I re-read and mull over it a bit more. In Chapter 8 we come face to face with the love of God through the good and the bad, challenging to trust what we have learned in the good times to be true in the bad times.

A couple of things that rang a bell for me:

(1) Define stress for what it is. Knowing that we are told not to worry, I tend to define worry as stress. Honestly, it is still tied up with worry and worry is sin, because in a round-a-bout way I’m thinking God may just not come through this time. Maybe His warehouse of goodness will run dry. But when I give thanks for what He has already done, my focus changes to the fact that He can be relied upon. In one of Jesus’ final conversations with his disciples, He told them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust God. Trust also in Me.” (John 14:1)

(2) Remember what God has done. Jesus, in passing out the bread and the wine, told his disciples, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” When I remember that He has given His life for me already, I will be more apt to believe that He will also provide the rest. Ann writes that sometimes we don’t see that He gives us all things good until we have some perspective.

 “In time, years, dust settles,

In memory, ages, God emerges,

Then when we look back, we see God’s back."

She refers to the story where Moses, in desiring to have proof of God's presence, asked to see God. (Exodus 33 15-33) It's a picture I can’t get out of my mind now;  how God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock, in the dark, covered by His protective hand, until He had passed by. Then, when God removed His hand, Moses saw His back. It's a passage I've read many times, but never seen in quite the same light. 
I think of times I wondered if God was there and see now that when He removed his hand, the evidence is there that He was there all along. If the darkness is as light to Him, I can trust that He sees best. One day I will see fully, just as I am fully known and loved.