When You Can’t See the Whole Road

Everybody wants God to prove He exists.

Show me.

Give me a sign.

Fix this.

Answer that prayer.

Explain why this happened.

Prove You’re there.

I understand the instinct.

It’s considerably easier to believe in the road when somebody turns the damn headlights on.

But that’s not really faith, is it?

Faith becomes faith when you can’t see around the corner and take another step anyway.

Look at the world right now.

Families are struggling.

People are sick.

Bills arrive considerably faster than miracles.

People bury parents, spouses, children and friends.

Good people suffer.

Bad people occasionally seem to be doing just fucking fantastic.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, we’re supposed to believe?

Yes.

Not because faith guarantees the outcome we requested.

Not because believing hard enough makes tragedy disappear.

And not because God owes us a miracle every time life brings us to our knees.

Faith was never a contract requiring God to perform on our schedule.

Imagine a family staring at an almost-empty refrigerator.

Money is gone.

Work dried up.

They’re scared.

They pray.

But then they get up the next morning and keep going.

Another application.

Another phone call.

Another knock on a door.

Maybe somebody unexpectedly brings groceries.

Maybe a friend hears what’s happening and connects them with work.

Maybe an opportunity finally opens.

Months later, they look backward and see a path that was completely invisible while they were standing inside the darkness.

Was faith some vending machine that produced employment?

No.

Faith was what kept despair from convincing them that tomorrow wasn’t worth showing up for.

But there’s another kind of faith.

A much harder kind.

The prayer that doesn’t end the way we wanted.

Someone you love is dying.

You’ve prayed.

Everybody has prayed.

And you’d trade damn near anything for God to walk into that hospital room and make the disease disappear.

But He doesn’t.

Your loved one dies.

Now what?

You might rage at God.

Question Him.

Cry until there isn’t anything left.

Ask Him why.

I don’t believe honest grief frightens God.

But somewhere inside all that pain, faith can eventually whisper:

They’re not hurting anymore.

No more procedures.

No more struggling for breath.

No more body betraying them.

No more suffering.

You wanted healing here.

Instead, your faith tells you they went somewhere suffering cannot follow.

That doesn’t make the empty chair hurt less tonight.

It gives the empty chair meaning beyond tonight.

That’s faith.

Not stupidity.

Not refusing evidence.

Not pretending everything is fine when everything absolutely isn’t.

Faith is standing somewhere you cannot understand and saying:

I cannot see what God sees from where I’m standing.

And walking anyway.

There’s something else we sometimes get backward.

God doesn’t need to prove Himself worthy of us.

And Christianity isn’t about proving we’re worthy enough to earn salvation from Him.

We aren’t.

That’s the whole damn point of grace.

We aren’t buying our way through the gates with enough good deeds.

But if we claim that grace changed us, eventually there ought to be some fingerprints.

How did we treat people when nobody was watching?

Did we feed somebody who was hungry?

Forgive somebody?

Protect somebody weaker?

Tell the truth when lying would’ve been easier?

Admit when we were wrong?

Did we love our families while they were still here?

Did our faith make us more compassionate—

or merely more certain that everybody else was going to hell?

That’s an examination worth having.

Maybe instead of constantly demanding:

“God, prove Yourself to me.”

we should occasionally ask:

“God, does the way I’m living show that I believe in You?”

Because I believe better days are coming.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe years from now.

Maybe not in the form we’ve been demanding.

And for some things, maybe not on this side of eternity.

Faith doesn’t require knowing when.

It asks whether you’ll keep walking when you don’t.

And that brings me back to an old image that has stayed with generations of people for a reason.

The footprints.

A person looks back across the road of their life.

During the good times, there were two sets.

But across the darkest stretches—the grief, fear, loss and moments when they barely survived—

there was only one.

And the question comes:

God, why did You leave me when I needed You most?

But maybe we’ve been reading the evidence backward.

Maybe those weren’t our footprints.

Maybe the stretches where we were absolutely certain we had been abandoned were the very places where we were being carried.

Think about the moments you survived that you were certain would destroy you.

The loss you thought you’d never live through.

The night you didn’t know how you’d face morning.

The season when the numbers didn’t work.

The prayer you could barely finish.

The day your legs finally gave out.

And yet—

somehow—

you’re still here.

Maybe someday I’ll look back at the darkest stretches of my own life and wonder why there was only one set of footprints.

Maybe I’ll finally understand.

Those weren’t mine.

I thought I was walking alone.

I was being carried.

And maybe that’s blind faith.

Not believing God will keep me out of every storm.

Not believing I’ll always understand His answer.

Not believing every prayer will end the way I wanted.

Just believing that somewhere beyond what I can see, there is still a road.

And when I have enough strength—

I’ll walk it.

When I don’t—

He’ll carry me.

Because faith doesn’t need the whole road.

It just needs the next step.

And when my legs finally give out—

He won’t.

SAINT DIRTY FACE™

Imperfect on Purpose. Faithful with Fangs.

Stay Dirty. Stay Dangerous. Stay Faithful. ✝️❤️‍🔥