Where shall I go from Your Spirit?

There are seasons when God feels close enough to touch. When calling has a name. When purpose has a place. When the road stretches clearly beneath our feet and faith feels less like trust and more like sight.

And then there are seasons when the road disappears. I find myself there now. Standing somewhere between what has been and what is yet to be, holding questions I cannot answer.

Questions of suffering.
Questions of purpose.
Questions of where I belong, and what faithfulness is supposed to look like when the certainty I once carried has begun to loosen in my hands. 

And into all of this, the words of Psalm 139:

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Where shall I flee from your presence?

Where shall I go? The question has followed me.

Through hospital corridors and crowded streets. Through prayers and silences. Through moments when I have felt certain of God, and moments when I have searched for Him in places where suffering seemed to speak louder than He did.

If I ascend to heaven, you are there.
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

The heights. The depths. And somehow, impossibly, God in both. I have seen the depths here. I have stood beside hospital beds and watched suffering unfold without knowing how to stop it. I have heard prayers whispered into rooms where medicine had little left to offer. I have watched courage rise in places where hope should, by every earthly measure, have disappeared.

There have been moments when I have looked around and silently asked, God, where are You in this? And perhaps His answer has always been the same.

Here.

Not above the suffering. Not untouched by it. Here.
In the room.
In the waiting.
In the grief.
In the hands that keep caring when there is nothing left to give.

If I make my bed in the depths, You are there. 

And now I find myself asking a different question.

Not only, Where are You? 

But, Where are You leading me?

I wish the answer came like lightning. I wish God unfolded maps. I wish calling arrived with coordinates. Instead, I am learning to live inside the space between the question and the answer. And perhaps that is why these words have become so precious:

If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.

Even there.

Two small words. And somehow, they have become an anchor. Even there, on the wards of Connaught, beneath tired lights, where I have learned both the fragility of life and the extraordinary strength of those who fight for it.

Even there, among the dust and rain of Salone, the sound of worship carried through the morning air, the laughter spilling from roadsides, the streets that were once unfamiliar and have somehow become woven into the fabric of my life.

Even there, beyond the horizon. Across oceans. Along roads I cannot yet see. In whatever place waits beyond.

Even there.

For so long, I imagined God’s will as a narrow road I am terrified of missing. One right decision. One right place. One life I must somehow discover. As though one wrong step could carry me beyond His reach.

But Psalm 139 speaks of no such God. It speaks of a God who follows us into the heights and waits for us in the depths. A God for whom oceans are not distance. A God who cannot be left behind. Perhaps I have spent too much time asking God to show me the road when He has been offering me His hand.

Your right hand shall hold me.

There is such tenderness in that promise. Not you will understand. Not you will know what comes next. Not even the road will be easy. Only, I will hold you.

And perhaps, for now, that is enough. Because there is a peculiar grief in feeling the seasons shift. In loving what has been while sensing that something is changing. In standing with your hands still wrapped around one chapter while feeling the pages beginning to turn.

There are places that become part of us. People who leave fingerprints upon our lives. Streets whose sounds become familiar. Rooms where we have wept and prayed and laughed and discovered pieces of ourselves we did not know existed.

And when a season begins to change, we can find ourselves wondering whether stepping toward something new means somehow betraying what came before.

But love does not require permanence. Some places are given to us not so that we might remain there forever, but so that we might never again be the person who arrived. And perhaps leaving one season does not mean leaving God within it. Because He is not bound to the places where we first encountered Him.

Where shall I flee from your presence?

Nowhere. There is nowhere. Not even into uncertainty.

Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,
even the darkness is not dark to you.

There is darkness in not knowing. The horizon disappears. The familiar landmarks fade. We stretch our hands forward and find only air. But what I call darkness is simply a place my eyes have not yet learned to see. Because the night is not night to Him.

The night is bright as the day.

What is hidden from me is already known by God. The road I cannot see is not invisible to Him. The future I cannot name is not uncertain in His hands. And suddenly I realise – faith was never about seeing far enough ahead. It was always about trusting the One who can. The God I know is so much bigger than I have allowed Him to be.

Bigger than my understanding of calling.
Bigger than the boundaries of countries and oceans.
Bigger than the work I do and the places I have loved.
Bigger than the plans I have made.
Bigger, even, than my fear of getting it wrong.

He was here before I ever arrived.
He has been here in every beautiful, brutal, sacred moment.

And wherever the tide carries me next, He will be there too. So perhaps I do not need a map. Perhaps I do not need to see the horizon. Perhaps I only need to loosen my hands, lift my eyes, and remember:

If I rise with the morning – You  are there.
If I descend into the depths – You are there.
If I make my home beside familiar shores – You are there.
If I cross the uttermost parts of the sea – You are there.
If everything ahead is hidden in darkness – still, You are there.

And wherever the next chapter begins.

Even there Your hand shall lead me. Even there Your right hand shall hold me.