Sweetwater Presbyterian

Small in size, Large in Faith and Love

Deovtion Feb 20, 2019

Greetings!
When I heard that the church conference my daughter and I go to every year was going to be in Galveston, Texas, several thoughts went through my head.  I didn’t know where in Texas Galveston was located and the only real thing I knew about Galvaston was through the song sung by Glen Campbell - which has periodically been running through my head since I found about the location of this conference way a long time ago…..
Because we live in the ‘information’ age it was pretty easy to google Galvaston and learn everything I could.  I’m pretty geographically challenged so I still had kind of a hard time figuring out exactly where it was in relationship to the rest of Texas and the United States and I still have difficulty wrapping my head around the size of the state of Texas especially since I came from a fairly small state!  
But the big thing I learned is that Galvaston was on the Gulf of Mexico and there was a beach in front of the hotels and the conference center where our meeting was going to be.  Beach!  That is pretty much all you had to say - Beach!!  I figured even with all the meetings and classes and such there would still be time to watch the waves roll into the beach and relax within that great atmosphere!  I was excited!  To the beach I was going!  Whatever else there was pretty much immaterial.
Our plane landed in the late afternoon and we started our hour long drive from Houston to Galveston when it started getting rather rainy and foggy…. rather foggy might have been a bit of an understatement…. it was getting very foggy.  My wonderful driving daughter did an excellent job of navigating through the dark and rain and fog to eventually find the hotel we were staying in.  (We were amazed when we left Galveston at the end of the week at the bridges and such we had driven over and never even noticed because it was that foggy…..)
We did manage to find the entrance to the hotel which was more of a challenge than it should have been but because of the extreme nature of this fog we literally couldn’t see much of anything.  Thank goodness for extremely bright lights in front of hotels!  We checked in and in doing so said something about the fog and the hotel clerk kind of sighed and said, “Yes,  this is sea fog.  We get it this time of year almost every year.  It is pretty nasty”  “How long is it supposed to last?” I asked.  “Oh” she answered “Anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks”.  
I didn’t ask more questions (maybe because I was afraid of the answer and I really didn't want to hear we were going to be fogged in the entire week we where there)  but I wasn't totally dismayed because I kind of assumed it would be the fog like I am use to - the fog where it is heavy in the morning and then as the day progresses eventually lifts and all is well.  But no, this was not that kind of fog - sea fog - who had ever heard of that?
Sea fog, it turns out, does not lift as the day progresses.  We got up the next morning and opened  the curtain to look out at the scenery of Galveston and at the beach…… And all we saw was this curtain of gray.  Really?  So I went out on the balcony and I literally had a hard to seeing the chairs on the balcony much less anything outside of the balcony rail.  I admit - it was a little disconcerting.
I was in a bit of mourning because I had looked so forward to looking at the beach and the waves and the sea beyond… and all that was visible was gray fog - heavy, wet, no light piercing, fog.  I knew the beach and the waves and sea was there, just right across the way….. but it was not to be seen - at all. 
God is there.  God is always there.  God is always right with us.  But so many times we get fogged in with all the problems and issues and stress and difficulties around us and we can’t figure out where he is.  We can’t see him, we can’t feel him, all we see is the fog of the problems that are weighing us down.
Remember - you don’t need to see God to know he is there.  We live in the promise of a God who knows every hair on our head, knows everything that we are going through, and even knows that the fog will lift and he will help us then see clearly.
Don’t get so caught up in the fog that you forget that even if you can’t see what is right in front of you, God is there.  
Amen!