yet your footprints were unseen

i have been pondering something i read recently, something that so perfectly put into words what the last few years have felt like.  then as i was thumbing through the Psalms the other day i was drawn to Psalm 77.  i had written notes in the margin, probably during one of my college bible classes, and it seemed applicable to the very thing i had been thinking through.  days later i looked back at this particular passage and chose to write it out, hoping i would then be able to process it more, or that something would stick (one can only hope after too many nights of interrupted sleep with a sweet baby).  as i came to the end of the chapter i wrote out these words: “yet your footprints were unseen.”  i stopped.  for the first time in a long while words from the Bible actually struck me and forced me to reread them over and over.

those words were a reiteration of the very thing i had been thinking through, yet i had never noticed them in the Bible before.

yet your footprints were unseen

first, however, you must start at the beginning…as the chapter begins the Psalmist is crying out to the Lord, feeling completely abandoned, alone and drowning in the pain of circumstances: “you hold my eyelids open; i am so troubled that i cannot speak…will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable?  has his steadfast love forever ceased?  are his promises at an end for all time?”  i have felt those words deep in my soul.  feeling completely alone, completely abandoned by the God who says he will always be there; much of which i shared in my previous post.  those thoughts are what originally drew me to this passage because in the margin i had written:

“remember the truth through the darkness.”

the Psalmist doesn’t stay in the darkness that seems to be surrounding him.  instead he forces himself to remember who God is and what He has done: “i will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, i will remember your wonders of old…you are the God who works wonders.”  he goes on to describe some of the ways that God was there for the israelites as they stumbled through the desert seeking refuge and often feeling as though God had abandoned them there…“the crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lighted up the world; the earth trembled and shook.  your way was through the sea, your path was through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.  you led your people like a flock by the hand of moses and aaron.”

during that time the israelites couldn’t see God.  yet he was there, concealed in the ways he was leading them.  his footprints, however, seemed to have left.  those could not be seen.

during many of the dark days of the last several years i have not seen God’s footprints.  i can’t even say i could look back and see them in hindsight on many occasions.  that’s why when i read those words in this passage i felt so heard.  not seeing or feeling God’s presence isn’t abnormal, which i knew, but seeing those words actually written out in the Bible felt so comforting, seemingly giving me permission to acknowledge that truth.

He was there, in pain with me.  the footprints may have been my own, but that doesn’t mean He abandoned me there in the darkness.

His footprints were simply, unseen.

may i seek to remember that truth.