Dawn
“For from of old they have not heard nor perceived by ear, neither has the eye seen a God besides You, who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him.” (Isaiah 64:4)
“Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10)
The day was clear and searing. The winds of the day before had blown away a confusion of clouds and haze. As dusk descended, shades of sapphire draped the horizon. Stately trees stood silhouetted against the resplendent backdrop while shadows skittered into hiding with the setting sun. The darkening canopy pressed close and I listened for whispered secrets, but silence sounded loudly. Although the day was clear, clarity remained elusive. It had been a day of watching and wondering—a day of waiting.
That was yesterday.
Today, I took my Bible and wandered out to the garden, that place where I’m so keenly aware of my partnership with God. I tend the soil, plant seeds, and provide food and water. But it’s God’s cycle of seasons and the rising and setting of the sun that grow the seeds into foods of sustenance. I cannot do it without Him. And He does not do it without me. We work together in the garden.
I sat in the weathered Adirondack chair and considered this majestic God who graces me with His partnership and whose displays of glory surrounded me. Again I waited and listened, wondering if today He’d choose to reveal His mysteries. An audience of one, I watched the rising of the morning sun and the shadows that danced once again.
With the sun, clarity dawned.
Answers to questions I’d been asking of God for several days crystallized in my mind, shimmering assurances for my insecurities. I opened His Word and sought confirmation. Were these answers from God or were they the wild imaginings of a creative mind? There in black and white, in the inerrant Word of God, my answers were confirmed. It would be a day of revelations.
In Paul’s paraphrase of Isaiah 64:4, he tells us that God has prepared for those who love Him revelations of “things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man.” Paul spoke of those who love God, and Isaiah spoke of those who wait for God. God opens the eyes, ears and hearts of those who love Him and wait on Him. We can anticipate knowing things we’ve never before known—such is the mystery of God as revealed by His indwelling Spirit.
God’s glory surrounds us; we see Him in all of creation. But sometimes the most obvious lessons are withheld from those who lack eyes that see or ears that hear. Jesus revealed the Father through parables of mustard seeds and soil. Those seemingly benign objects of nature hold the glories of God.
I long for moments when God speaks His wisdom to my soul, when He reveals His splendor in the language of my heart—through the first shoot of a seedling or on the wings of a dove. I’m learning to set aside margins of time in which to simply watch and listen and wait, time when I “cease striving and know that He is God” (Psalm 46:10).
His revelations cannot be cajoled; they come in His time and in His way. But we must partner with Him in this endeavor, awaiting His revelations with hearts of love, fertile and prepared.
And when He so deems, clarity dawns.
