Unseen

 

When I was just a teenager in 1963, an evangelist came to our church who was a chalk artist.  He had an easel set up with lights and music … old-school multimedia.  He started the music and began to draw.  He laid the stick of chalk on its side and splashed a broad area of one color on the lower half of the paper.  Then another area of color in the upper left and a third color in the upper right.  As I looked, I had no idea of what the drawing would become, but he did.  This artist knew from the beginning exactly what he was doing.  In his mind, he already saw what the drawing would be.  He knew, but none of us knew.  And as time went on and more lines were drawn, the final picture took shape.  He had a few special colors that were added that didn’t seem to make any sense.  He drew lines and curves that were meaningless.  But after he was finished, he stepped back and switched on a florescent light that was a UV black light and the UVR chalk seemed to leap off the paper!  There was a big moon up in the sky that had been invisible.  The mountains and trees had extra depth and detail that I had not been able to see.  What a great presentation!  Hey, the good Lord is working in just such ways in my life.  Now that I look back upon my life, I can see how God led me, by a crooked path, to where I am now.  But when I was younger, I could not see what God was doing nor why He was taking me through such difficult ways.  David said in Psalm 27:11, “Teach me thy way, O LORD, and lead me in a plain path …”  God had Samuel to anoint David to be the next king of Israel, but David did not reach the throne for almost fifteen years.  God was leading AND God was preparing David.  Hey, do you seem to be left behind?  Do you feel abandoned by the Lord?  Take heart!  God is still in heaven and is still leading you behind the scenes.  David went on to say in Psalm 27:14, “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.”  Let me repeat what David said, because it’s good advice for us, “Wait on the Lord.”