When God’s Protection Isn’t Pretty

“If I didn’t follow God here, then I don’t know Him at all.” I whispered these words because I was afraid to speak them any louder.

There are times in my life when I’ve known that I was living in disobedience, when I’ve known that I had walked away from God. But this was not one of them. This time, I really had been following Him as best I knew how. I really had been seeking Him.

I thought I knew where I was headed. I thought I knew where God was leading, but 2014 proved that I did not. It was a year of endings and illness and doors sealed shut.

I kept waiting for God to come in strength and power. I kept staring at the doors that had slammed closed, willing Him to walk through one of them.

And then I read that line from the story of Noah:

“And the LORD shut him in [the ark].” {Genesis 7:16b, ESV}

I don’t know how many times I had read it without seeing it. I don’t know how many times the driving rain had shifted my attention from the hand of God.

I thought, in the first months of 2014, that I was building a boat. It turns out I was building an ark. I had anticipated an exciting destination. God had anticipated the storm. I had expected direction and purpose. God had planned preservation and rest.

When the doors slammed shut, and the waters started rising, I looked around that dimly lit ark, and I wondered where in the world my God had gone.

But it was the LORD who shut Noah in the ark.

We hear verses like “You hem me in, behind and before” {Psalm 139:5} and “Under His wings, you will find refuge” {Psalm 91:4}, and we think God’s protection is going to be pretty.

Sometimes the ark God chooses to preserve us in may not be pretty. Noah’s certainly wasn’t. His was filled with the chaos of every kind of animal. His was tossed upon a raging sea that had consumed all evidence of land. With every creak of the wooden vessel, they probably wondered if the water would engulf it. They probably got seasick. They probably got sick of each other.

They probably wondered if it would ever end. Haven’t we all?

I did. I wore myself out banging on the door of my ark. Then I dropped to my knees and cried for rescue. And then I just lay there. Exhausted. Disillusioned. More than a little confused.

Until I whispered my confession: That I didn’t know where God was. That I didn’t know where I was. That I didn’t know His voice at all unless He’d led me to that place.

Then I saw it, the faintest impression of the hand of God upon the sealed-shut door. And I knew, in a place much deeper than my mind, that . . .

I had mistaken God’s preservation for His punishment. I had been tucked away in what felt like isolation, protected by what felt like obscurity, and all the while, my faithful God had been working hard on my behalf.

He hems us in, and we balk as we lose the illusion of control. That place where He hides us under the cover of His wings is sometimes dark and hot and clammy. The ark is not always clean. His protection is not always pretty.

Sometimes the rain destroys all that was familiar. Sometimes the ark feels more like a prison. Sometimes the days are long and dreary. Sometimes the flood keeps tossing us upon the waves long after the storm has stopped.

Finally, we lie down or cry out or look up, and we find hope where we did not expect it.

We find God right there where we thought He had left us.

And we find that He is a lot more interested in drawing us to Himself than He is in leading us anywhere else.

[linebreak]