You’re on a small rowboat in the sea. You’ve been looking for land . . . longing for it. You haven’t eaten or had fresh water in 2 days – not to mention the ship that went down that landed you in this circumstance. You are desperate.

It’s cold, and everywhere you attempt to see you’re blinded by the fog.

It must have set in sometime in the early hours of the day, as it often does – so extending the night in its blocking of your vision.

As you train your eyes on the horizon, trying to see through the fog, you start to see something. It’s faint, but it looks like a shadow. Could it be?

Your heart jumps at the slight chance that there is a shore hidden in the fog ahead. You row hard – using all your energy to get to that possible salvation. Your hope builds as you row.

This is it. It’s right there. Finally, you’ll be safe.

Five minutes pass. Ten. You are sweating now, despite the cold, but it will be worth it when you reach the shore.

Fifteen. You’re starting to wonder if you are just rowing slowly because of the lack of food and water. Twenty. You should have reached the shore by now. The shadow on the horizon should be right . . . here . . .

But, it’s not. Tears start to burn and fall because you have put everything into this final row. All your energy. All your strength. All your hope.

All your faith.

And now . . . would God really leave you with nothing?

The fog is so thick. It hasn’t lifted. And now you feel surrounded, not by the chance of rescue, but the deafening discouragement that comes from unfulfilled hope.

Is this where you give up? Is this where you give yourself to the inevitability of things never truly panning out? Is this where every voice that has ever said, “why even try,” gets the final word?

It could be. And, I would understand.

It’s been really, really hard. You’ve felt all alone in your suffering. If life is your teacher, you have learned the lesson of loss many times over.

And yet. I think there is something inside of you. It’s quiet, but persistent.

You may experience it as a spark or a trickle. There is a kernel of something – maybe less than hope, but more than a white flag . . . It’s a whisper that speaks still of a not-so-distant shore.

And if you listen . . . you just might see . . .

While the shadow you put your hope in disappeared like the mist it was, the shadow was never your salvation.

What you still cannot see through the fog is the safe harbor waiting just half a mile beyond where you sit hungry and thirsty and desperately tired.

And, you can sit defeated in the mist of your false relief shrouded in shadow. You can turn back in search of something . . . anything else to put your kernel of almost-hope in.

Or, you can stop the frantic search. Stop searching the horizon for something you cannot see.

Open your ears to hear the beckoning sound of the one who is coming out, even now, from the safe harbor – just outside of what you can see – to bring you safely home. He has been calling to you, searching for you, finding you.

To you who are suffering with no view of safe harbor . . .
I can’t promise the ship won’t go down. I can’t promise that you won’t be hungry and thirsty. I can’t promise that you won’t give every bit of your strength in the fight. I can’t promise the fog will lift. I can’t promise you will see the shore, even if it is within your sight.

But I can promise that the God who created you is coming for you – he knows the way to the safe harbor for your soul . . . even . . . especially through the fog that has threatened to hold you captive.

And when we finally reach that shore in freedom, may we be surprised by what we find.

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
1 Corinthians 13:12

Search for the Lord and for his strength;
    continually seek him.

Psalm 105:4