A week after our two-year-old granddaughter, Taylor, had spent a summertime vacation with us, I called for a chat. When I said hello, little Taylor yelled, “Grandma Sue! I wondered wherever you were.”
Of course, I was in the same place I’d been the last time Taylor talked to me, but, for a young child, the concept of location can be a great mystery.
After that sweet telephone conversation, I tried to picture the world from a two-year-old’s perspective. You get into a car and drive for hours. Early on, you fall asleep, and your parents wake you up as they pull into the driveway at your Grandpa and Grandma’s house. You stay for more days than you can count, and then, after another napping drive, you are home. But where are your grandparents? Where did they go?
For me, during difficult times — when life presses too hard for too long — I have a tendency to lose track of God. My frail spiritual sight is blighted by life’s circumstances, and I don’t picture myself as walking away from the Lord. It seems that God was the one who left me. My prayers become the questions of a confused child. “God, you were there every day. Where are You now?”
I love the promises our Lord gives us in His Word: “Seek, and ye shall find.” (Matthew, chapter 7, verse 7, King James Version) “Draw nigh unto God, and He will draw nigh unto you.” (James 4:8, King James Version)
When I read those promises I realize that God is listening, and, like the child that I am, I exclaim in delight, “Oh Lord God, I wondered wherever you were.”