Reduced Visibility

It was a glorious autumn day at 5PM when I stepped out the door of work yesterday. Still, clear, bright autumn colours and the fragrance of the season. Not five minutes down the roadway I was enveloped in fog. Where did this come from I wondered? I drove through intermittent patches all the way home. It was clear at my house but I could hear the ferry foghorn in the distance and knew it was not down at the dock. Before long it was fogged in here as well. Yet just now as I closed the blinds to snuggle into home for the evening the sky was dark but clear once again.

Fog can happen in any season, anywhere in the world. It is often referred to as “clouds at ground level” and is usually associated with fair, calm weather. The main reason it forms is the air is so saturated with moisture that the clouds literally fall to ground level. Fog is responsible for over $1million in damage annually in the United States.

Foggy patches in life creep up so subtly, arriving with little or no warning. One minute you are sailing along in the sunny spaces of life and suddenly fog envelops you, mind, heart and soul. Everything goes on high alert in the frantic search for the familiar, for places or things or persons who will help us gain our balance again, gain our sight and perspective once more. Our internal compass swings wildly about when we enter this “fog” patch. Instead of standing still and searching for the Voice of the One who sits above this fog we are in, and sees clearly, we tend to run blindly about, bumping into things we cannot see. In these times I stumble blindly along, uncertain of where I am going, wondering why I am here, or there. Missing my points of reference, I am unable to think clearly enough to grasp them in the fog. I usually try everything I can and as a last resort call out to Abba for direction. Sometimes He must just sit there chuckling while I run about like an idiot! The fog times in my life have left damage in their wake. I think I just get lazy in the fair calm weather and let go of being alert and alive to all around me. My compass conversation times with Abba get left on the back burner- my true North point of reference. As real as this fog is, so also the reality of the clear Light filled periods where direction is restored.

Fog will inevitably be a part of the weather patterns in our seasons of life. It has a beginning and an end. What is it for? Looking at Romans 5:1-5, I know the weather patterns are required to develop that “passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next.”

Thank You Abba for the fog patches on life’s road that slow me down. Thank You for Your voice that penetrates the fog, Your voice this is the compass, Your presence that is the familiar. I release control to You, and ask You to do the driving through those “clouds at ground level”. Again I ask for bold belief to be a risk taker for You. No matter what the weather conditions in my soul, that I will pursue You with all my heart, all my mind, all my strength, and all my soul.

Jesus Saviour pilot me, over life’s tempestuous sea…

Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all