Even When I Can’t See It

One of my favorite worship songs, that somehow hasn’t gotten old even though I’ve sung it/heard it one billion times, is “Way Maker”. If you’re reading this and listen to Christan music, there’s a good chance you’ve already heard it (maybe even as often as I have), but for those who maybe haven’t heard it yet, here’s some of the lyrics:

Way Maker, Miracle Worker, Promise Keeper, Light in the Darkness… That is who You are

Even when I don’t see it, You’re working… Even when I don’t feel it, You’re working

You never stop, You never stop working… You never stop, You never stop working

NOTE: If you want to hear this song in its entirety, I suggest watching this video. It’s my favorite version of it from a conference I attended—it’s had over 19 million views at the time of me writing this! https://youtu.be/KeXcHAurv5A

Every time I sing this song in church, something explodes within me. This song speaks to something very personal in my heart. It has been my song since I first heard it in a church service back in 2017.

These last four years of my life have been fraught with times of learning to trust that in the middle of my uncertainty, in the darkness that is cloaking the path before me, God is there working. I once described it to someone as being like if I was walking in a pitch black room, my hands out in front of me, not knowing what was up or down, right or left, or where the obstacles were located. I knew God was somewhere in the dark room, I just didn’t know where He was or how to get to where He wanted me to go.

By the end of each year, the darkness would lift and I would glimpse the path ahead and find peace in knowing what the next step was. But just as quickly, a new year would come, and with it a new darkness to obscure the future. This has been a constant cycle in these first few years of my adult life. Maybe this is normal for everyone, maybe this will always be my circumstances. Or maybe not, and the sun will start to shine for longer periods of time. Regardless, through these seasons and through the powerful words of this song, I have learned that even when God seems silent, even when it seems like He’s kicked back in His throne twiddling His thumbs while you wander aimlessly, He’s actually still at work. He’s creating something in the darkness, and once the lights are turned back on, we will see His masterpiece.

One of the most stirring examples I’ve seen of this recently is in the Bible—sort of. Think about the two Testaments, the Old and the New. We finish reading Malachi at the end of the Old Testament, then move onto Matthew at the start of the New. We go from the tumultuous years of the Prophets speaking for God to Israel as they fell in and out of idolatry, to Israel suddenly under Roman rule and Jesus being born. Now, it’s a well-known fact that this space between the two testaments was a period of four-hundred years of “silence” from God, but I never gave much thought to it.

That is, until I read a book series called The Silent Years by Angela Hunt.

This series covers historical figures and events during that Intertestamental period, and the beginning of each book starts with a note from the author. Here she explains this four-hundred year period in a way that made me see it in a whole new light.

Think about it for a moment. Four-hundred years. Four centuries, dozens of generations, with no word from God. After centuries upon centuries of men of God speaking on His behalf, Yahweh has fallen silent. No more miracles, signs, and wonders to remind the people of His power.

That is darkness of the deepest kind…

Do you not think that many fell into despair during that time, thinking Yahweh had abandoned them? Don’t you think they became bitter and angry? Doubtful of God’s power and His love? It’s easy for us, too, to think that during this time God was sitting back doing nothing.

But He wasn’t.

During this four-hundred year period, He was working in the background. He was setting the stage for His grand entrance into the world as its Savior. This time that was plagued by war and oppression, eventually leading Israel into the arms of Rome, created a deeper yearning for the Messiah. He quietly fulfilled prophecies that had been spoken generations before, turning the tables of the world until everything lined up according to His plan. As Angela Hunt points out in her foreword note, He brought Daniel’s interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to pass, raising and lowering the kingdoms of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. He allowed these powerful civilizations to unite the world with unprecedented road systems and sailing routes that would allow the future apostles to spread the gospel across all nations. And he ordered the steps of two families to bring about the birth of a girl named Mary, and a man named Joseph.

He was working, all that time! The Jews of the day couldn’t see it, likely never even realized it after the fact, but we have the advantage of an overarching hindsight. We can look at the grand scheme of the Bible and see what He was doing in the darkness.

So how can we fear today when we have such an example as this, and many more, of God’s intricate plan? How can we despair in the darkness when He’s proven that He’s always working? Even when we don’t see it, He’s working. Even when we don’t feel it, He’s working! He nevers sits back idle. He’s always moving, always spinning this crazy world between His hands, ordering every living thing in a divine dance.

He’s a Miracle Worker, a Promise Keeper, our Light in the Darkness! That is who HE IS!

Remember this lesson in 2020, if you find yourself in that dark room. I pray I will remember it as well. Right now, the sun is shining, but darkness may very well descend again this year, and if it does, I’ll just keep singing “Way Maker” at the top of my lungs and worship my way through every word even if I look like a crazy person. Because someday, we’ll have that overarching hindsight on our lives, and we’ll see what He was doing all along.