It’s almost two in the morning, and I’m sitting on a porch in upstate New York. A couple electric fans are shifting the cool air around and stifling the silence of the sleeping house, but otherwise, everything remains motionless – even the animals have quieted for the night.

Basking in this stillness, I feel closer to God than I have in weeks, even months. Maybe it’s the quiet, maybe it’s freedom to let my mind wander between prayer and dreaming, or maybe God prepared my heart tonight for His muted voice. But looking into the ink black of the sky, I am starting to understand what I’ve been struggling to grasp lately.

Just because some of God’s promises are hidden from sight, doesn’t mean that they have disappeared. In the midst of the darkness, light burns. It might flicker and fade – but with God, light burns and hope swells. Hope abounds even when we can’t see it.

My God is intentional and purposeful. Leaning over the edge of the porch and craning my neck towards the sky, I can see countless stars burning for miles in every direction. Each is intricately placed across the sky – some in separate galaxies, light years away from each other. Some stars are visible to the naked eye, but millions more lie cloaked in the mysterious folds of the universe.

There’s beauty in these folds of mystery throughout life, beauty in both the seen and the unseen, and that’s something I’ve been overlooking. It’s easy to sit on a porch and fix my eyes on the stars ensconced from the heavens. I may not be able to touch them or feel their light, but their visibility makes them tangible to me. The difficulty lies in imagining those stars that hide beyond my line of vision. The difficulty lies in choosing to hope, choosing to believe, choosing to recognize that God is good even if I can’t always understand Him. But it’s a choice that I have peace making because I know that my God keeps His promises, both seen and unseen. There’s beauty in the struggle to rest in the unseen because surrender is at the center of it.

This weekend I felt as if I was reading Isaiah 40 for the first time. So many of those verses speak of God’s comfort to His people, while exalting him as eternal, infinite and almighty. Take this verse as an example:

“He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in his arms, holding them close to his heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young.”
Isaiah 40:11

He carries His lambs close to His heart, and He keeps his promises. It took me a trip through two border crossings and some back roads to realize this again. God is good. I am choosing to hope.