"The Darkness and the Light are Both Alike to Thee"

I've alluded to this in a couple of recent posts:  my husband and I are moving unexpectedly this summer, and we don't know where we're headed yet.

I hesitate to talk about it here for a multitude of reasons, but a huge one for me is that this blog is a place for finding joy.  For myself and you.  Because I know myself:  if I vent, I easily get myself into more and more of a place of darkness and set myself up to forget anything God has done for me.

If I may seem to have a majority of happy posts, or posts that share beauty and flowers, I'm not trying to hide or be fake.  I'm just trying to gather the flowers along my path of life, not the thorns.

That said, I want to talk a tiny bit about darkness today, because the light gleaming at me from the Bible is such a contrast to it.

Because I am in that place now where I don't know what's coming, and I don't have the slightest idea where the next step will lead or what God's plan might possibly be.  I like to plan, to know.  But right now, I can't {plan}, and I don't {know}.  I had hoped to be in my current lovely home with the huge garden space for several years at least.

I'm having to give up not only what I have, but also what I knew I would have here should we have stayed.

And at the moment, I don't have anything concrete to look forward to.

Have you been in a place of darkness like this before?  Figuratively?  Literally?  Maybe in the woods later than you planned, without a flashlight on a cloudy night? 

You take a step, feeling your way and testing the ground ahead before you put your full weight on that foot.  You hold tightly to a branch, a tree trunk, something you hope is secure while you try to navigate truly only one step at a time.

It can feel like slow going.  It can feel like it takes forever to get anywhere.

Life feels a little like that right now.  Slow going.  No sense of the landscape.

So when I begin to study this week's Sabbath School lesson (http://ssnet.org/lessons/13b/less06.html), and I read Psalm 139:12 where David is talking to God, my mind gets boggled.

"Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee."

Darkness doesn't hide my landscape from God.  He doesn't take each step wondering if it's in the right direction, or if there's sturdy ground under the next foot forward.  Darkness is just the same as light to Him. 

To God, everything is always clear.

Purpose.  Direction.  Plans. 

I know, because of many evidences of the last few weeks and even through my whole life, God walks with me today.

Today, then, this darkness and uncertainty I feel makes no difference to Him.  He sees the way clearly from beginning to end--not just the next step I'm tempted to worry over.  I can cling to His arm.

He knows I want a garden, and He's planning for that.  Meanwhile, He arranged for me to have a landscaping job to fill the time I would have spent starting my own garden right now.

And that's just one example.

And writing it down?  It really does help His guidance seem more real to me, even yet today, and makes the darkness seem less foreboding, less something to worry over than something I'll look back on one day and see a grand adventure.