God is in This Story

We just got done spending a weekend in Galesburg (our hometown) visiting with family and spending some time with my mom. We’re on the road heading home now and it is very foggy. It’s the kind of fog that makes it hard to see the road signs, or even the road, at times. Not too long ago, this type of weather would have sent me reeling – as an agoraphobic, I didn’t go far from home anyway, but the fog would have made me stay put. A big part of my anxiety and agoraphobia was a need to feel like I was in control. Deep down I knew there were plenty of things that were out of my control, but I still found comfort in controlling what I thought I could – which meant no driving (or riding as a passenger) in bad weather. 

On New year’s eve in 1988, there was fog similar to this. In the NFL playoff game between the Chicago Bears and the Philadelphia Eagles, it got so foggy that visibility on the field decreased to about 15-20 yards. The game came to be known as the Fog Bowl. Les and I had plans that night to go to a hockey game in Peoria. My mom suggested that we not go brcause it was likely to get foggy like that in our area. We went anyway, and my mom was right. It got foggy that night. Very foggy. It took us over 2 hours to make what was then an hour drive. We made it home safely, but that frightful drive has stayed in our memory all these years.

I imagine there are some people who enjoy the fog, especially if they don’t have to travel in it. A gentle, low fog settling over a field or lake is almost poetic. Our life circumstances are a lot like the fog. Sometimes they roll in gently, painting a lovely picture as we sit on our porch looking out over the mist. Other times they come at us with the dense fog advisory – limited visibility, dangerous conditions, hazardous driving. These circumstances and conitions make it hard to see God in our story. It feels as if the “walls” are closing in and we can’t see past the situation. I have felt that way so many times in life.

In the devotional “My Utmost for His Highest”, Oswald Chambers wrote about clouds (fog is a cloud that forms close to the ground). He talks about how clouds are always associatied with God and that “clouds are the sorrows, suffering or providential circumstances within or without of our lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God, Yet it is through these very clouds that the spirit of God is teaching us to walk by faith.” In a song based on Chambers’ devotional, Steven Curtis Chapman sings “sometimes he comes in the clouds. Sometimes his face cannot be found. Sometimes the sky is dark and gray. But some thigs can only be known, and sometimes our faith can only grow when we can’t see; so sometimes he comes in the clouds”,

Just like driving in the fog when we have to hold on tight and really focus on and lean in to what we can see and what we know is there, it is the same when the fog settles in our lives. We can’t see past the circumstances but we know, like the road signs and landmarks, that God is still there. Eventually the fog clears and the sun comes out, How wonderful it is to realize that God was with you through the worst. Oswald Chambers wrote about how God doesn’t necessarily want us to learn something in the trials, rather he wants us to know that he brings the clouds – he comes to us in the fog so we become completely dependent on him and him alone.