Trusting God in the Little While

“A little while, and you will see me no more; again a little while, and you will see me.” — John 16:16

For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about this simple phrase from Jesus: “A little while, and you will see me no more; again a little while, and you will see me.”

I don’t know why, but those words have been sitting with me. Maybe because when I look at my own journey of faith, it really has been a collection of little whiles. There are moments when I feel like I can see God so clearly. Everything seems to come together. Something I’ve been struggling with suddenly makes sense, and I find myself thinking, “Lord, I see what You’re doing now.” And then, just as quickly, that clarity can disappear. Suddenly I’m confused again. I start questioning. I start wondering if I misunderstood Him. To be completely honest, I start negotiating with God. I think we all do it.

We say, “Lord, I understand You have a plan, but maybe we could do it this way instead.”

“I know You want me to trust You, but couldn’t You just give me a little indication of where this is going?”

“I know Your timing is perfect, but wouldn’t now actually be a better time?”

And sometimes my prayer becomes less like surrender and more like a negotiation. I’m talking to God, but I’m also trying to convince Him. And the funny thing is, I’m trying to convince the One who already knows everything. I can sit before God and explain my situation as though He needs the information. I explain why I’m hurting. I explain what I need. I explain what I think should happen. I explain why my plan makes sense. I probably sound like a child trying to convince his father that he absolutely needs that piece of candy right now. And God, in His patience, is probably looking at me with the tenderness of a Father who already knows. He knows what I want. He knows why I want it. He knows what I think will make me happy. But He also knows what I cannot see. And that is where faith begins to become something more than simply believing that God exists.

Faith becomes trusting His providence. Providence is a beautiful word, but I think sometimes we make it sound much more complicated than it really is. It is the realization that God is not standing somewhere far away watching our lives unfold. He is present. He is working. He is sustaining. He is guiding. Even when I don’t recognize His hand. And that is where I find myself discovering something that I didn’t understand before. God’s grace is often already moving before I realize I need it.

Think about that.

Sometimes I pray for grace after I find myself in a difficult situation, but perhaps God’s grace was already preparing me for that moment before I ever knew the moment was coming. Maybe the strength I need tomorrow is being formed in me today. Maybe the patience I will need later is being learned through today’s waiting. Maybe the humility I will need for something I haven’t encountered yet is being formed through today’s disappointments. Maybe God is doing something in me right now that I won’t understand until much later.

And that’s where “a little while” becomes so profound. Jesus doesn’t tell the Apostles everything. He doesn’t give them the entire map. He tells them there will be a little while. They don’t understand it. They question it. They are confused by it. Honestly, I find that comforting. Because sometimes I think we believe that if we have enough faith, we should understand everything God is doing. But the Apostles were walking with Jesus Himself, listening to Him directly, and they still didn’t understand. So maybe confusion isn’t always a sign that faith is failing. Maybe sometimes confusion is where faith is being invited to grow.

Because there comes a point when God stops asking us, “Do you understand?” And starts asking us, “Do you trust Me?” That’s a completely different question. Understanding gives me control. Trust gives God control. And that’s difficult. Because I like control. I like knowing where things are going. I like knowing the outcome. I like having a plan. And then God comes along and says, “Trust Me.” And I’m thinking, “Yes, Lord, absolutely. But could You give me the details first?”

That’s the negotiation. That’s one of the funniest contradictions in my prayer life. I tell God I trust Him, and then I spend the next twenty minutes explaining to Him how He should accomplish His will. I say, “Thy will be done,” and then quietly add, “as long as Your will looks reasonably close to mine.” But that’s not really surrender. That’s a contract. And God isn’t asking me to sign a contract with Him. He’s asking me to enter into a relationship of trust. That’s where the discovery becomes deeper. I begin to realize that God’s providence doesn’t mean that everything will happen exactly as I want. It means that nothing is outside His ability to work toward my ultimate good. That doesn’t mean everything that happens is good. Some things hurt. Some things are unfair. Some things are consequences of our own decisions. Some things happen because we live in a fallen world. But God can enter into all of it.

He can take what I didn’t choose and still bring grace from it. He can take my mistakes and teach me humility. He can take my disappointments and teach me detachment. He can take my waiting and teach me patience. He can take my suffering and unite it to the Cross. He can take my confusion and lead me deeper into faith. And sometimes He can take the very thing I was asking Him to remove and use it to reveal something about Himself that I would never have discovered otherwise.

That’s providence. And that’s grace.

Grace doesn’t always look like God changing the situation. Sometimes grace looks like God changing me within the situation. And maybe that’s why we struggle so much with God’s will. We keep asking Him to change what is happening around us, while He is quietly changing what is happening within us. We ask, “Lord, when are You going to fix this?” And perhaps He is answering, “I am working on you while you are waiting for Me to work on it.” That is hard to hear, but  it is also beautiful. Because suddenly the waiting has meaning. The confusion has meaning.

The little while has meaning. This is when  I begin to understand that God isn’t wasting the time I think I’m losing. He is using it. The Apostles couldn’t see the Resurrection while they were standing before the Cross. They couldn’t understand that what looked like defeat was becoming the place where God would reveal His greatest victory.  Perhaps that’s something we need to remember in our own lives. Sometimes we are standing in front of our own Cross asking God why He hasn’t moved it. And God may be inviting us to discover Him there. Not because He wants us to suffer, but because He never wastes suffering surrendered to Him. That is the mystery of grace.  God can take something painful and make it a place of encounter. He can take something confusing and make it a place of revelation. He can take something we thought was the end and use it as the beginning of something we couldn’t yet imagine.

So I’m learning to negotiate less with God. I’m learning to explain less. I’m learning to tell Him less about what I think He should do. Instead, I’m trying to say:

“Lord, I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know what You’re doing.”

“I don’t know how this is going to work.”

“I don’t even know what I should be asking for.”

“But I trust You.”

And maybe that is the prayer of a maturing faith.

Not “Lord, make everything happen according to my plan.”

But:

“Lord, teach me to recognize Your providence even when it doesn’t look like what I expected.”

Teach me to recognize Your grace when it comes disguised as waiting. Teach me to recognize Your presence when I don’t feel it. Teach me to recognize Your hand when I can’t see what You are doing. Most of all, teach me to understand that when I say “Thy will be done,” I am not asking You to conform Your will to mine. I am asking for the grace to conform my will to Yours. Because You are God. You see the beginning, the middle, and the end. I see today. You see the whole story. And perhaps that is what Jesus means when He says:

“A little while”.

Maybe I don’t need to know how long the little while is. Maybe I don’t need to know exactly what comes next. Maybe I simply need enough grace for today. Enough faith for today. Enough trust for today. Because tomorrow will have its own grace. And when I finally look back, perhaps I’ll discover something I couldn’t see while I was living through it:

That God was never absent.

He was never ignoring me.

He was never simply standing by.

He was quietly working through every moment, sometimes through the things I understood, and sometimes even more profoundly through the things I didn’t. And perhaps the greatest discovery of faith is not discovering that God will always give me what I ask for. It is discovering that His providence was already at work before I ever knew what to ask for. His grace was already waiting for me in the very place where I thought He had left me.

A little while.

And then, once again, I will see Him.

God bless you always.