Have you ever had to walk through a muddy field? There was no way around it, no other way you could go, you had to walk through this muddy, squishy, wet field that might very well claim a shoe or two? You spend the whole time looking down at the mud, carefully planting one foot after the other, doing your best to find the least gross path, and trying very hard not to fall. You might even step slowly to try to minimize the amount of mud and water that gets splashed on your clothes.
We do this in our lives too. When life gets messy, overwhelming, chaotic, or downright gross, we keep looking down at all the mess, muck, and mire. Because, if we don’t, we will for sure make a wrong step, fall down, or lose a shoe. Sometimes though, we spend so much time looking down that we end up walking into even muddier field or going in circles or going in the complete opposite direction that we need to go in. We so badly want to get out of the mud with as little causalities as possible that we don’t think we have time to stop and look up.
We can get so consumed with looking down that we don’t even know how we ended up knee deep in mud and very much lost. As God walks with us through the mud, He asks us to pause, to breath, to take a moment. And to look up. When we look up, we see that the mud does end, that there is dry land, a warm shower, and clean clothes on the other side. We can see that where we are going is better than what we left behind. When we look up, we can see the promises of God. When we look up, we can see God Himself wading through the mud, offering His hand, offering direction, and never forsaking us.