By Jessica Brodie
Have you ever seen an optical illusion that made things seem far worse than they are?
Last week, my husband and I were driving home late at night after a work event. It was a long drive, around two hours, and my eyes were bleary—thankfully, he was driving. As I gazed ahead, I saw what appeared to be billowy plumes of gray smoke in the forest lining the interstate before us.
“Is that a fire?” I pointed.
Matt glanced over. “No, it’s lights—see? They’re doing construction.”
He was right—massive construction lights were set up so late-night road crews could work on that stretch of highway, their glow lighting up the trees. From my perspective, it looked like smoke and ash, the haze of a steady burn. But in reality, that wasn’t the case at all.
Our human perspectives are easily skewed. Sometimes it’s tired eyes driving home late at night. Sometimes it’s wishful thinking. Sometimes, hunger, pain, and suffering cloud our perspective, or deep, aching longing.
There are times in my life when I was certain the path I was walking was God’s plan for my life, only for me to reach a firmly closed door—and realize I was walking in the wrong direction. Other times, it felt like I was wandering in the wilderness, only for me to look back much later and see God had been steering me through the whole time, and what seemed like wilderness was actually a pilgrimage.
There’s a line in scripture I love—“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path” (Psalm 119:105 NIV). I love it for the visual it evokes, the idea that God himself—his love, his holy Word, his guidance, his entire essence—is a lighthouse in the dark night, pointing me home. He goes before me, holding his lantern of wisdom and truth. All I need to do is follow, placing my small feet in my Father’s footprints, and I am safe. Protected. Secure. Aligned.
The apostle Peter calls God’s Word a “light shining in a dark place” (2 Peter 1:19).
And we need that light, don’t we? On our own, left to our own faulty wisdom and perspectives, sometimes what we see is altered by what we feel, the current state of our weak and all-too-temporary bodies, and the hardships before us. We think we see clearly, but we don’t. We cannot possibly fathom what it’s like to see with eyes of the Lord, the kind of eyes that spoke life into existence and created the heavens and time itself.
That’s why faith is so critical. We must trust that we are held in the hands of the Alpha and the Omega, the Lord God Almighty. We must trust that by staying in connection with him—reading and meditating on his word, praying, worshipping, basking in his beautiful essence and the hope that fills our hearts—we are aligning ourselves with the only thing that truly matters.
Sometimes what we see before us looks bleak. Sometimes loneliness and pain and hurt threaten to consume us. But take heart, my brothers and sisters in Christ. The God of the Universe holds us close, now and forever.
So the next time you find yourself squinting into the darkness, uncertain of what lies ahead—remember those construction lights on the highway. What appeared to be smoke and danger was actually illumination.
The smoke isn’t real. The Light is.
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Are you a reader? I write Christian contemporary fiction that addresses the authentic, real-life faith issues many of us struggle with—forgiveness, mental health, and how to embrace new life in Christ after years of sin and wandering. (They’re also both Amazon bestsellers!) I hope you’ll check them out. Available in paperback, ebook, or audiobook. Click here.
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