Making the Most of the Gray

Faith is like radar that sees through the fog — the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see.—Corrie Ten Boom

It’s all there in black and white. And supernatural red.

Except when it’s not.

Sometimes, the answer to life’s daily questions is gray. Very gray. Not as in gray areas, where it’s left up to one’s own interpretation to determine what the Word of God means to you, but just…silent in revealing details on how to decide, how to move, what to do next.

Though we may wish it were so at times, the Bible is not some ultimate vending machine where you’re guaranteed an “answer” prize every time you insert a quarter. Many times, yes, but sometimes, you get your change back instead. Not because it’s “out of order” but because the prize that awaits is probably worth a whole lot more than you think.

While it’s black-and-white true that the Bible says in one place that God “himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else,” and in another, it says “all scripture is God-breathed and profitable” for a whole bunch of things in this life, the Bible also celebrates gray:

By faith Abraham heard God’s call to travel to a place he would one day receive as an inheritance; and he obeyed, not knowing where God’s call would take him.

We walk by faith built on unfailing promises in black and white, and red. Or, as one version puts it bluntly:

The path we walk is charted by faith,

not by what we see with our eyes.

On many days, this walk of ours can be like strolling along the seashore on a beautiful summer afternoon, the vastness of God’s “all things are possible” magnificence roaring and swirling around your feet, with clear markers and destinations ahead, blue skies all around, and feeling an unexplained resolve within to joyfully push against the winds of resistance whistling around your face.

But on just as many days, in fact perhaps the majority, it’s a walk in the fog, with nothing but shades of gray on the horizon. You know that vast “all things are possible" magnificence is roaring and swirling out there somewhere—surely, you can hear it anyway—but that is all. And there is a strange sort of comfort in that as you move forward, putting one foot in front of the other. All of a sudden, you begin to better understand the Psalmist’s declaration: Your Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path…one step at a time rather than lighting up the entire course to the finish line, where the “aHA!” lightbulb may never go off but you know that you know God’s right with you, stride for stride.

"Trust Me. I will never leave you or forsake you..."

Yesterday was like that here on the coast of Maine. Instead of speaking discouragement and worry, the moist, gray blanket was one of peacefulness and calm. You couldn’t see very far in front of you, but there was a confidence and reassurance of wherever you were walking into the glorious unknown, no matter what the circumstances and surroundings tried to dictate, you felt you were never alone. 

Maybe a foggy summer Saturday is a snapshot of what it looks like to live in true repentance—not just to die to your old way of living but to change your way of thinking on things uncertain, unresolved, or unfinished, too. 

Because when you really stop to look and take it all in, while admitting you’d prefer having life served up in neat and tidy packages of plain-as-day black and white, you can see tons of beauty in the gray of faith. No matter in which direction you turn, there is the perfect, jaw-dropping color combination to support the weighty gray: the green of hope, of life, of growth, of abundance and fruitfulness.

And if that weren’t enough, sailing peacefully upstream against the tide, two (because it says in black and white, "two are better than one") paddleboarders ride happily into the thickness of fog before them, standing on the promises that seem to be shouting out into the stillness of the marshland precisely why you can make the most of every gray day ahead:

God is not a man, so He does not lie.

    He is not human, so He does not change His mind.

Has He ever spoken and failed to act?

    Has He ever promised and not carried it through?

"Trust Me. I will never leave you or forsake you..."