Does God ever step away?

My obvious answer is no, but let me explain...


I have always said that God doesn't step away from us, but more as "a correct sunday school answer." It's kind of like when a Sunday school teacher asks a kid who the most important person in their life is, and the kid screams "JESUS" because he knows that "Jesus" is usually the right answer when he's in sunday school. Anyway, my point is that I would have always said that God doesn't ever walk away from us, but I have learned more about why over the past couple of years through reading scripture.

I have been reading a book called "Tour of Duty" by Sara Horn. It has been a great way for me to start preparing myself for deployment and have some expectations going into it. God has really been laying a specific verse on my heart the last couple of weeks...

"When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future" -Ecclesiastes 7:14, NIV

The thing that I love about this verse is that it tells us to praise God when things are both good and bad. It is so easy for us to thank Him and feel blessed when our lives are going well, but when we are going through something difficult or even tragic, we either start clinging or running from Him. What if we constantly praised Him in the good and bad? I don't say this lightly because I have gone through what I consider tragic and I definately did not go into it "praising God," but instead I crumbled. When my mom got diagnosed with breast cancer my senior year in high school, I literally felt lost. Now, over 2 years later, I can see God's glory out of my mom's time here on earth and her death and know that He had a sovereign plan for each of her days.

I also feel like this verse relates to military wives all over the country. There are so many good days as a military wife, but there are definately difficult (or bad!) days as well. As wives we deal with fear, uncertainty, lonliness, and stress while keeping the homefront moving forward and thriving. Military wives are given an ambundance of resources when facing an upcoming deployment...books, briefings, forums with other military wives even to handle such a large upset in our lives. What the military doesn't give us is strength in our father. We have to consider who God is to us. When we realize that He is our loving Father, the Creator of the universe, and a sovereign God with a plan, we have peace in the fact that he has provided us with everything we need to survive deployments or even tragedies in our lives... His Word!

God has also laid some of our best friends on my heart so much lately while studying this verse. They are expecting their third child and recently received news that their baby has some sort of chromosomal disorder and may or may not make it full term to delivery. As we've been walking through this with our friends, the Lord just continually speaks to me about praising Him during the good and bad and reminding me that He does ALL things for good and for His glory. The amazing thing about this situation with our friends has been that I thought that God was laying this on my heart to encourage her, which I have been trying to do, but what I realized is that God is also teaching me about this truth by watching their family live this out and be obedient to His word. On days when I expected to go to their home and see her bawling and angry at God, instead she was calm, collected, and proclaiming that she knows God has a plan and does always work for good. She may not see what that plan is right now or even understand it, but she believes that He does have a plan for their child and whole family. We absolutely love you both if you're reading this post.


What an amazing testimony of God's love and promises to us! I am constantly encouraged as God reveals scripture to us and we get to see it lived out in lives :)