The sound outside was quiet. Did it snow? That muffled sound, early in the morning during a Colorado winter, usually means an overnight snowfall came calling. When I opened the blinds, however, I could hardly believe my eyes — a wall of fog. It was a fog so thick we might’ve awakened in San Francisco or Point Reyes or Cape Disappointment, that foggy place with the sorrowful name in another foggy place, the state of Washington.

But here in bone-dry Colorado, I could barely see the house next door. This fog was crazy thick — so dense and cold that the weather report on my phone described it with a name I’d never heard: “freezing fog.”

“What’s that?” my husband Dan asked, grabbing his phone. He Googled, and we sat on the side of our bed, looking through photos of this odd (to us) but sometimes beautiful weather wonder.

And that should’ve been the end of it.

But I kept checking to make sure the fog wasn’t something actually bad, such as smoke. I worried because, just a few days before, a raging wildfire torched through entire neighborhoods in nearby Boulder County, leaving more than 1,000 homes reduced to piles of ash. Some 30,000 people were now suddenly homeless, their former homes just smoking rubble.

My head was swirling with these facts and images, and we hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. Why couldn’t I just relax?

Things didn’t look up, even when Dan noted the actual weather forecast for the day — “sunshine and clear skies.” When? In one hour.

Still in our pajamas, we both scoffed. “Wrong,” he said. “We can barely see across the street.”

“Sunshine?” I laughed. “Did I type in the right zip code?”

But you know where this story is going. Because sure enough, in less than an hour, the sky outside had steadily cleared and was now awash in bright blue. Fog all gone. Not one cloud in a sparkling sky. Sunshine pored down from the heavens, the fog only a memory. I’d seen that kind of “burn off” during a visit to San Francisco. But here, where fog is rare, I’d struggled to believe blue skies and sunshine could arrive after such a fog-frozen morning.

Standing at a window, I shook my head, berating myself for the morning’s entire episode. I’d awakened to freezing fog, but the Lord was sending a sunny day — whether or not I could believe it.

So, is my trust that weak? Or, as I asked Dan, “Do I only trust God for what I can already see?”

I sat with the question because, most days, I think of myself as a trusting believer. (You probably think this, too.) I even grew up singing old hymns about trust:

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

I’ve also written countless times about trusting God. One devotional cited Isaiah 26:3, “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.”

Steadfast minds trust God, my humble devotional said, because they know God. When King Uzziah died, and ungodly rulers came to power, Isaiah wondered, along with everybody else in Judah, Who can we trust?

God responded by giving Isaiah a vision that convinced the prophet that God is totally and absolutely dependable, and those who know Him believe Him with blessed assurance.

But when our minds are fixed on God — not on people, piffles, and problems — we learn to know His ways, character, and promises. He is our God who keeps in perfect peace all those who stop worrying over our not-yet troubles and instead trust Him. He is our trustworthy Lord and Friend.

Even on the foggiest of days, in the most confusing of times, we can trust Him — even for what we can’t yet see. Blue skies and sunshine, too? We might not see it now. But if we know God, we can bet our life His sparkling help is on its way.

 

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