ALONG THE WAY · POETIC INHABITATION
The Map I Was Never Given
On providence, surrender, and following without knowing the route.
I used to think that faith would make the world more certain,
that somewhere beyond enough prayer and obedience
there waited a kind of holy mathematics,
a way of knowing which road God would take
before I placed my feet upon it.
I wanted one and one to make two.
I wanted prayer to be the asking
and providence to be the answer,
the two joined by a straight and visible line
I could trace backward and call understanding.
Perhaps this is why surrender frightened me for so long.
It was not God I feared losing,
but the small kingdom I had built from knowing what came next,
where every door had a reason and every loss an explanation,
where obedience could be measured by its outcome
and wisdom meant never being surprised.
It was a very orderly kingdom.
It was also very small.
For the God I met in Scripture seemed forever leading people
toward places they could not have named when they began.
Abraham was given a command before he was given a country.
Joseph was given a dream that said nothing of the prison.
Ruth went looking for enough grain to survive the winter
and found herself gathered into a story
whose ending she would never live long enough to see.
Again and again, God seemed content to reveal the road
only as quickly as someone was willing to walk it.
And still I wanted the map.
I wanted to know His will so I could pray His will,
to pray His will so I could walk without fear,
as though discernment were God’s quiet agreement
to remove all mystery from following Him.
But there are prayers for which I know the words,
and there are prayers that begin beyond the reach of language.
There are things I know God desires because He has already spoken,
and things I can only hold before Him with an open hand,
confessing that I cannot see far enough
to know what redemption would even look like from here.
Perhaps this is why the Spirit meets us in our weakness,
not merely when we lack strength,
but when we lack even the imagination required to ask rightly.
There are answers I could never have prayed for
because I did not know such answers existed.
There are roads I could never have requested
because I could not see beyond the bend.
There are people whose obedience may already be moving toward mine,
circumstances being gathered that still appear unrelated,
doors being prepared in walls I have not yet reached.
I am asking God about the thread in my hand.
He is holding the tapestry.
And perhaps prayer was never meant to make me the Weaver.
Perhaps it was always an invitation
to place my small thread willingly into His hands,
to ask boldly for what I can see
while trusting Him with the vast country beyond my sight.
This is a strange kind of participation.
He knows everything and asks something of those who know almost nothing.
He invites us into purposes too large for us to comprehend,
then gives us enough light for one obedience
and calls that sufficient for the day.
I once thought maturity would mean seeing farther.
Now I wonder if it means needing to.
There is a peculiar freedom in discovering
that I am not required to understand the architecture
in order to inhabit the house.
I may never know why one corridor closed
until another has carried me somewhere I could not have reached otherwise.
I may mistake interruption for failure,
silence for absence,
an ordinary conversation for an ordinary conversation,
never knowing what invisible weight it carries in a story
being written beyond the borders of my perception.
God does not seem troubled by how little I understand.
I am beginning to suspect that I am the one troubled by it.
For years I mistook predictability for safety.
If I could anticipate enough, prepare enough, understand enough,
perhaps I could construct a life in which nothing arrived unannounced.
Then Christ came with the most unreasonable invitation:
Follow Me.
Not understand Me first.
Not approve the route.
Not calculate where obedience will lead
and decide whether the destination justifies the cost.
Follow.
There is something almost offensive about its simplicity.
The part of me that once lived by certainty
still wants to ask where we are going.
Sometimes He answers.
Sometimes there is only the sound of footsteps ahead.
And perhaps this is what I am still learning about discipleship:
the Christian life is not unsafe because God is careless with us.
It feels unsafe because He refuses to let control impersonate trust.
He will not become predictable enough to be managed,
small enough to be comprehended,
or tame enough that following Him requires nothing more than calculation.
He is good.
But goodness and safety were never synonyms.
So perhaps the prayer for the places I cannot understand
is not that God would first explain Himself to me.
Perhaps it is simply this:
Do what You have already purposed to do,
even where I do not possess enough sight to know what that is.
Teach me to recognize what is mine to carry
and to release what belongs only to You.
Give me enough light to follow
without giving me so much that I begin to mistake sight for faith.
And when the road disappears beyond what I can understand,
keep me from believing that it has disappeared from You.
For I am learning that mystery is not the absence of God.
Sometimes mystery is simply what providence looks like
from inside a story that is not finished yet.
And if one day I am permitted to look backward
and see how the roads crossed,
how the losses opened into places I could never have chosen,
how prayers I thought unanswered were answered in languages I did not yet speak,
perhaps I will finally understand why He never gave me the map.
I would have followed the lines.
He wanted me to follow Him.
