Have you ever forgotten how faithful God has been to you? We have events in our lives that cause us to be frightened and unsure. They have happened in the past and they will happen again. Any of us can say with surety that God has been faithful to us in the past. We may have wondered whether God would remain with us as we went through those challenging times. We may have judged that God let us down in those circumstances but later discovered how God had remained faithful. You might have even been used by God to convey His faithfulness to someone else by what you said or did in God’s name for them. You may have called someone at just the right moment, said just the right words, stopped by at just the right time or gave a gift with just the right timing. God gives us those urgings in our own minds and hearts to be the presence of His faithfulness in other people’s lives. That has happened to you, hasn’t it? But we may forget that God is that faithful unless we practice remembering.

It could also be true that the situation we are in right now seems bigger, more threatening or scarier than anything we have ever been through. There is the accompanying dread that this will finally be the situation that does me in, where God forgets to help me and I am left to deal with this all on my own. Deciding that is true is scary!

To believe that not even God cares enough to help me makes one feel hopeless and isolated. But why would that be true in this moment when it hasn’t been true in the past? Why would this be the moment when God is not faithful? Just because the situation is scary to me doesn’t mean that God won’t show up and be with me. Just as God has been faithful in the past He will be faithful in each and every moment of our lives.

We each get to decide what we will choose to believe about God. Remembering that God has always been faithful helps in the more difficult moments. Take some time each day to recount all the ways that God is faithful to you. God told us that He would take care of all our needs. Did He do that for you today? God told us that He would never abandon us. Did He stay with you today, even when you were unfaithful? Did He give you food to eat, and clothes to wear and shelter from the heat? Does God do that for us or is that our doing?

Unlike Elijah who was patient enough to wait for God to show up, even in the gentle breeze, we sometimes don’t wait on God or we decide how God is supposed to show up for us that day. We have lately been reminded that we have ears to hear and eyes to see. Are they working well enough to see and hear the faithfulness of God all around us, even in turbulent times?