alone

“What if?" blared in my mind.

I was surrounded by beautiful, vibrant rice fields, and yet this question was insistent on prohibiting any ounce of joy that I might have felt.

The girls were mostly happy, and we were having fun, and yet this slight fear had nudged its way into the corner of my mind. I had never been afraid of snakes before, and I still do not fear them, but I am not stupid either.

The day before, I had seen a scaly body curled up in a hole on the side of the road, not posing any danger, but it awakened me to the knowledge that there really are snakes here; they are not just legends. So now I was being very conscious about looking for snakes.

That’s where this nagging question came from. “What if someone got bit? How would I get them back? Who would come to help me? Would the people at home even be able to hear me yell? They certainly can’t see me now”. I pressed on, determined to enjoy the little bit of nature that I could; but still, I felt alone.

Lately, I’ve been feeling alone in more ways than one. I think Christians find themselves there more often than they would like, where we feel distant from God; when He feels silent. Sometimes it can feel like we have walked with our responsibilities into a maze of rice fields, and no one is around; you are completely alone.

This morning I got to talk to one of my best friends, and she was telling me about her own life and how she was having to trust God in the silence. She just didn’t realize how much she was describing my own life right now. It is so hard to trust God when He feels silent; we want to make Him say something or prove that He exists, or we just want answers, and we feel abandoned. The most important thing to remember in that case is to just trust God. He often uses the waiting to produce His finest works of art.

The verse my friend pointed out says that God chooses us in the furnace of affliction (Isa. 48:10). God does not give us easy circumstances to grow us. He lets us go through hard times because He knows that it will make us better in the end. Even though this silence is hard, I am working to draw closer to God and trust Him even in the silence. Will you do the same?