Last week, we sat with the truth that you are not behind.
This week, I want to sit with you in something quieter.
Not a revelation. Not a breakthrough. Just a question that arrived early one morning before the coffee finished brewing, before the noise of the day had opinions about my life:
What if you don’t need to see the whole path?
I have stood at the edge of more than one unmarked road.
You probably have too.
The kind where you know you’re supposed to move, but the destination hasn’t introduced itself yet. Where obedience looks less like confidence and more like stepping onto a surface you’re not entirely sure will hold.
I used to think that was weakness. That people with real faith had a map. That somewhere between the prayer and the “amen,” God would drop coordinates into your spirit and the route would clarify.
He doesn’t usually work that way.
What He tends to do — at least in my experience — is illuminate the next step. Just the next one. Not the landing, not the timeline, not the explanation you’d really prefer to have before you commit.
Just: move here.
And then, after you move: now here.
And the whole journey is assembled that way, in retrospect, like a sentence you didn’t know you were writing until you reached the period.
Looking back over the last year, I can see connections I couldn’t see at the time. Doors that closed. Plans that changed. Delays that felt disappointing in the moment. Yet somehow, each step led to the next one.
A photograph taken in Dubai last year now feels like a reminder. At the time, I was simply enjoying the moment. Today, I see something different: thousands of illuminated pathways stretching in every direction, like a visual reminder that God sees the whole map even when I can only see the next step.
There’s a version of faith we perform. Polished. Certain-sounding. The kind that knows all the right words for not knowing.
And then there’s the real thing.
The real thing sometimes looks like being embarrassingly unclear about where you’re headed while being absolutely certain you were told to go.
The real thing sometimes looks like explaining yourself to no one because the explanation doesn’t exist yet.
The real thing sometimes looks like obedience without the comfort of an itinerary.
Abram left. The text says it plainly: he went out, not knowing where he was going. Not “he went out nervous but mostly sure.” Not “he went out with a general sense of direction.” He went out not knowing.
That’s the whole assignment, sometimes.
Not understanding. Not certainty.
Just: will you go?
So if you are standing at something that feels like an edge right now — a decision, a door, a direction that hasn’t fully formed — I want to offer you this:
You don’t have to see it all.
You were never meant to see it all. The full picture isn’t withheld to frustrate you. It’s withheld because trust built on partial information is a different kind of trust. Stronger. More personal. The kind that has to choose Him rather than just follow a plan.
He’s not asking you to understand the whole path.
He’s asking if you’ll take the next step.
That’s still enough to go on.
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. — Proverbs 3:5–6
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. — Psalm 119:105
Be still. Trust the path you cannot yet see.
Karen T. Jackson, MPA, PA-C
For more Sunday Still’s, click here.
Leave a Reply