Unseen Footprints
Sometimes I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for a long time and I'm not sure there will be any air to breathe when I finally let go. It’d be nice to know what God is doing in those moments rather than being left there to flail for clarity.
J.I. Packer’s comments on Ecclesiastes in Knowing God give a little ease. It’s hard to read Ecclesiastes too quickly and not be left with a dim, nihilistic worldview. Knowledge is pointless. Evil thrives. Justice is undelivered. Wealth doesn’t last. Nothing makes sense. We’re all gonna suffer and die like animals:
For the fate of the children of Adam and the fate of animals is the same. As one dies, so dies the other; they all have the same breath. People have no advantage over animals since everything is futile. All are going to the same place; all come from dust, and all return to dust. Who knows if the spirits of the children of Adam go upward and the spirits of animals go downward to the earth?
Ecclesiastes 3:19-21 CSB
Packer even admits that “most occurrences ‘under the sun’ bear no outward sign of a rational, moral God ordering them at all,” and that trying to make meaning out of it all is will only leave you more convinced of its aimlessness. That sucks to face when you’re starving to see a pattern in your pain.
But despite the world being so frustratingly confusing, Packer reminds me of something I probably once knew but often forget: God’s order isn’t as meaningless as it is hidden:
For the truth is that God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives.
"The Preacher" in Ecclesiastes seems to agree. Not once does he suggest there’s a void behind the vanity. We just don’t have the privilege of seeing the purpose moving in its midst.
Just as you don’t know the path of the wind, or how bones develop in the womb of a pregnant woman, so also you don’t know the work of God who makes everything.
Ecclesiastes 11:5 CSB
That’s reassuring to think about, despite it being difficult to believe when you‘ve forgotten which way is up. Only a dummy would conclude purpose doesn’t exist just because you can’t see or make sense of it.
It makes some Scripture read differently too, like Psalm 77. The author describes the moment God delivers His people from the Egyptians in the most dramatic way:
The water saw you, God.
The water saw you; it trembled.
Even the depths shook.
The clouds poured down water.
The storm clouds thundered;
your arrows flashed back and forth.
The sound of your thunder was in the whirlwind;
lightning lit up the world.
The earth shook and quaked.
Your way went through the sea
and your path through the vast water,
but your footprints were unseen.
Psalm 77:16-19 CSB
What a terrifying show of strength and supremacy over this world. There’s no way even the most devout Israelites expected God to save them in such a bizarre, reckless way — straight through the sea.
What I’m just noticing is that such a hectic scene would’ve made it impossible for anyone to think they had “caught on” to God’s plan. There was no chance of being tempted to move forward on your own, thinking you already knew where He’d head next. It’d be impossible to anticipate anything — “your footprints were unseen.” You move only when He guides you.
I still hope that’s what He’s doing with me. As much as I hate the waiting, I have to hold out for the possibility that none of it will be wasted, and that maybe prematurely revealing even smallest detail of a plan risks me becoming too trusting in my own agency and not enough in His. I don’t think I have a right to argue against that plan anyway:
Woe to the one who argues with his Maker —
one clay pot among many.
Does clay say to the one forming it,
‘What are you making? ’
Or does your work say,
"He has no hands"?
Woe to the one who says to his father,
"What are you fathering?"
or to his mother,
"What are you giving birth to?"
Isaiah 45:9-11 CSB
Packer’s words toward the end of his book offer some more solace.
He is not as in such a hurry as we are, and it is not in his way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God.
Walking in that doesn’t leave much room to fret about the senseless disarray tormenting us on this planet. Instead, we have a simple assignment in light of it all:
When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity. For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 CSB
I’ll (try to) ground myself in that.