Looking to God in the Midst of Unpredictability

This blog was originally published on Jan. 28, 2020 on Key Ministry’s blog.

We were at lunch after a seminar in Ohio when I suddenly had a huge black spot in my vision. Having a very complicated set of eye diagnoses that caused my visual impairment, I was fairly used to strange visual symptoms, but this one was new. An eight hour drive from home, all we could do was text a picture of my eye to my doctor. He told us to get to an ER with an eye hospital as soon as we could. My cornea had perforated; there was a hole in my eye.

It always seems like the crises of disability come at the most inconvenient times, doesn’t it? A meltdown just as you’re heading out the door, a shot of pain in the middle of a nice dinner, a hole In your eye when you’re far from home—it could be that there is no “convenient” time for disability, but as I waited in that dark ER, I kept wondering what there was for us in the unpredictability of disability.

That’s when I remembered a familiar image—a picture of a camp of thousands of Israelites in the middle of the desert, with a pillar of fire in their midst. God, through this pillar of fire or cloud, dictated the Israelite’s every move, literally. When the pillar rested, the Israelites set up camp; when the pillar moved, they got up and went. The pillar had no routine—it didn’t move to a new place every ten days, it wasn’t triggered by a certain offering. The pillar stayed at Kadesh Barnea for 13,590 days, but stayed in other places only overnight.  This pillar, and therefore the Israelite’s moving and staying, was entirely unpredictable by man.

“17 Whenever the cloud lifted from over the sacred tent, the people of Israel would break camp and follow it. And wherever the cloud settled, the people of Israel would set up camp. 18 In this way, they traveled and camped at the Lord’s command wherever he told them to go. Then they remained in their camp as long as the cloud stayed over the Tabernacle. 19 If the cloud remained over the Tabernacle for a long time, the Israelites stayed and performed their duty to the Lord. 20 Sometimes the cloud would stay over the Tabernacle for only a few days, so the people would stay for only a few days, as the Lord commanded. Then at the Lord’s command they would break camp and move on. 21 Sometimes the cloud stayed only overnight and lifted the next morning. But day or night, when the cloud lifted, the people broke camp and moved on. 22 Whether the cloud stayed above the Tabernacle for two days, a month, or a year, the people of Israel stayed in camp and did not move on. But as soon as it lifted, they broke camp and moved on. 23 So they camped or traveled at the Lord’s command, and they did whatever the Lord told them through Moses.”  Numbers 9:17-21 (NLT)

Because the pillar was so unpredictable, I imagine the Israelites had to learn to pay close attention to it. They couldn’t just go about their routines and look up every ten days to see if the pillar was ready to move. They had to watch intently to see if it was their time to pack up at any given moment—whether it was just as they were getting ready to leave their tent or in the middle of a nice dinner.

If I could have predicted that my cornea would perforate on that Saturday afternoon, would I have needed to depend on God for the next months of daily hospital visits? No, I could have planned my own schedule around that chaotic time. Perhaps the unpredictability of disability is an invitation—an invitation to pay attention to God, to where He is moving and what He is teaching, an invitation to depend on Him to work out the details instead of taking control ourselves. Most days, I wish that I could control when my cornea perforates, when my pain is worse, when I have especially poor vision—but if I had that, perhaps my eyes would be focused on the wrong things anyway.