A Simple Case for the God We Cannot See

by Jessica Jolley

A SIMPLE CASE FOR THE GOD WE CANNOT SEE

I don’t see the wind.

I can’t explain its exact mechanisms. I don’t always know its coming or its going. Yet I see the whisper of leaves and their shades of green shimmering in the early morning, a glittering of movement as the sun’s rays catch their various angles and reflect a stirring among their branches.

I notice the kitchen’s curtains catch this unseen something and flutter, the layers floating gently toward me before slowly falling back down.

I’m enraptured with the whimsy of cumulus blooms as they shift in the atmosphere high above.

I look on the playful ripples of a lake pointing to an ever-present companion that pushes and pulls, changing the water’s shape day after day.

I turn my face toward the breeze, and as its light touch brushes my cheeks, I know it’s there.

I don’t understand how shoots emerge from the soil.

There is a special kind of beauty that comes from what is cultivated out of mess. The soft clay both stains hands and brings forth life. We plant with great hope and expectation, trusting what is sown to fall under the spell of its own instinctive responses, while also removing our dust-crusted shoes before stepping indoors, lest we bring it where it does not belong.

My kids and I read a book displaying the slow steps of the growth of flowers: how their seeds take flight in that same wind, land in the ground, and eventually transfigure into colored buds, one day becoming opened petals for little hands to admire or pick for mom to put behind her ear.

The next day, we go outside and compare the same phenomenon in our own garden—those teardrop seeds we pressed into the ground months ago are now vines winding their own way amidst the tomatoes and spinach, with luscious leaves framing the growing squashes speckling our little rectangle of dirt.

Oh, the glory of this design! The great mystery of new growth from seemingly nothing! My children and I wonder at this process—the one we only partially witness yet have the privilege of eating the very fruit from its unseen labor.

I don’t often stop and marvel at the power of gravity.

Still, I experience the fear of its lack when I am double-bounced by my six-year-old on the trampoline, or when I miss a step while cradling that same six-year-old when she longs to be held after a hard day. “Thank you, Lord,” I breathe out as some force catches me and brings me back to safety.

I see the birds sailing in the open skies and swooping down as if suddenly experiencing an abrupt change of mind. I watch in sudden alarm as they near closer, closer, closer to the ground, carried lower toward the magnetism of earth’s pull. But at the very last moment, they open their wings and rebel against this heaviness that brought them down in the first place.

I don’t see it, yet I feel its powerful presence in everything around me.

I may never fully comprehend the inevitability of suffering.

My hazy, worn-out eyes long to see my Father in the pain, to cry out, “Where are you in this?” I wonder why we must face it and why won’t he stop it? Why it rears its ugly head at the best and the worst of us alike. How it rips and tears and how in the world good can emerge from it still.

But there on my porch and in my backyard rest plants that have seen all sorts of battles—yet somehow live.

No, not just live. Thrive.

These leaves and boughs and spongy lime greens have faced heavy downpours, a toddler curiously poking and prodding, or my own cutting back of their yellowing pieces and offshoots that are not bearing the beauty for which they were created. Even so, they return with a veracious proof of life, somehow stronger after a ruthless trim. Barren branches emerge more alive, as if thankful for a cutting back, grateful for a gardener who would notice what is not good and not leave it—someone who doesn’t leave it alone in both the storms and the pruning.

I think of the times I’ve been stripped bare myself: Our first night in a foreign city after leaving everyone and everything we knew; doctors and nurses speaking in heavy accents as they talked me through my contractions at 26 weeks; daily pulses of pain in my forehead and eyes—for years.

Just when I have all but given up under the weight of hardship, I begin to see little shoots of hope sprouting from the tattered edges of my soul. And I realize—I’ve grown into a woman of deeper faith because I have a Caretaker of my heart who is doing the sheering with the deepest of love and compassion.

I can’t see God.

One of the many reasons much of the world does not believe he is there—a lack of physical seeing. I try to describe this faith of mine with direct prose, as if that would suffice. His presence and love are impossible to perfectly pinpoint. I think, if I could fully grasp and explain everything he is, maybe the world would more often turn their hearts toward him. Maybe I would.

“Lord, why don’t you reveal yourself to us as you did in the days of old?” I ask toward the Heavens as I read of the blind man’s eyes opened, the Red Sea split in half, a persecutor blinded and brought into the Light.

Beautiful, incredulous, very real miracles. His love on display. But that was then, wasn’t it?

I am like the rich man begging Abraham for my fellow man, thinking surely “if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent” (Luke 16:30 NIV). If they could just see…

Yet… Perhaps it is all still there. Evidence that he, himself, is everywhere.

Do I still see it? Here, now?

Because really, if I look close enough, he is all around me—in the gentle flow of the wind, new life arising from the dirt and weeds, the way gravity keeps us solidly on the ground God created with only a word.

How both my garden and my heart respond to a very good Gardener who patiently prunes and walks alongside me through it all.

A world bursting with his glory, an everyday beckoning for us to believe: Oh my dear children, how I love you. Look around and see me.

“…blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” -John 20:29

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” -Romans 1:20

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor....Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” -Psalms 8:3-4, 9

JESSICA JOLLEY

Jessica Jolley is a wife, a momma to two littles and soon-to-be three through adoption, and a missionary, but most importantly, she is a follower of Christ who wants others to also taste and see just how good He is.

She and her family have been living in Nairobi, Kenya, since 2017 and are continuously learning to stay on their toes in the beautiful chaos that is East Africa.

Her writing has been published at Risen Motherhood, Her View From Home, and elsewhere. You can find more of her musings on faith, cross-cultural living, adoption, missions, and motherhood on her Substack Entrusted With Grace and on her Instagram @jesselaine.jolley.