Patterns in the Dark
My daughter’s school had a book fair recently. The tracing books sat prominently on display. One advertised endless tracing over shapes and letters with wipe-away markers. Another book provided grooves where tiny fingers could run over the alphabet. The repetition would ingrain the patterns into their hands and minds, giving them a foundation for writing.
We understand the need for rhythms and repetition in motherhood. How often do we enact our own patterns to ensure our children’s trust? We hug sleepy-eyed ones each morning. We arrive to pick them up each day with smiles and questions. We play the silliest games over and over. We do the same things and say the same truths so as to ingrain into their sweet minds, “This is what Mom says and does”—just like tracing books.
At night when we reflect on the day, we hope they learn from the good patterns, because sometimes we fail at them. Still, we pray they can feel the mold of the sequences of our actions, even when life feels uncertain, scary, or just plain dark.
So, mamas, the question to us is similar: Do we remember the pattern of God when life feels dark?
The Darkness of Life
You and I have breathed long enough to know this is a fallen world. Brokenness clouds over our lives at times and can feel so thick it’s hard to see.
When our children hurt.
When we mourn what could have been.
When our families or we are mistreated and have little recourse.
When we are exhausted by the daily needs surrounding us and perhaps the fight with depression or anxiety.
Grief can be disorienting, and suffering can come with a fog that impedes our view. It can be hard to see what God could be doing or look forward with hope to what he will do in the future. Still, there’s hope of remembering what’s true. Because of our years of writing—likely beginning with tracing books decades ago—you and I can write letters, even in the pitch black. We know their patterns. Similarly, God has a pattern for us to trace with our fingers, so we know it, even in the darkness.
The Pattern of the Rescuing God
We know the story of God creating a good world and the disobedience that brought the brokenness of the world. I mean, we just described the darkness we feel because of it! But even amidst the crushing weight of the fall, we remember God’s pursuit of his people through the family of Abraham—the blessings that would, in turn, bless the entire world.[1]
And then, we get to the Exodus—the height of God’s heroic deliverance in the Pentateuch. God saved his people by showing his power. We’ve read the storybook Bibles to our kids, and perhaps, we’ve heard all of their questions about God’s miraculous signs—animals, weather, and disease. “God is over everything,” we tell them. By the Lord’s hand, his judgment fell, yet his people were safe, the first Passover teaches us.[2] Those who put their faith in the Lord were protected and led into freedom.
God rescued his people through redemption and provision, as millions of people flowed into the wilderness—no longer enslaved in Egypt. The Bible writers narrate the story with drama and detail, as if telling us, “Look how God works for his people.” Here’s the beginning of the outline our fingers can trace.
As the story continues, we start to grasp that this wasn’t just a deliverance for one generation; it would be the defining salvation for God’s people to remember. When God gives the Ten Commandments, he reminds them, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex. 20:2). Generations later, when the prophets call the people to repent and come back to God, they remind them he is the God who brought them out of Egypt.[3] The Exodus rescue defined God’s people—it told them who God was and who they were. They were those who had been redeemed and provided for by the Lord God.
So too, we obey because God rescues. We repent because God rescues. And we trust in the midst of suffering and heartbreak, because our God works in the pattern of rescue, like the Exodus.
That’s exactly what another prophet tells us. Habakkuk wrote a song for God’s people to sing while waiting, in faith, for things to get worse before they got better.[4] He spoke for the faithful in Judah who were going to lose everything because of the injustice, disloyalty, and disobedience of their neighbors. This prophet wrote a song for those who sat in the dark. In fantasy-like imagery, he reminded them of the pattern they knew well—the pattern of the rescuing God of the Exodus.[5]
When they faced chaos, Habbakuk pointed to the God who faithfully redeems and provides for his people. “Remember the pattern,” he says. “And God’s going to do it again,” the prophets whisper together.[6]
Remembering for the Future
God did do it again.
God redeemed and provided for his people through Jesus. He saved through a miraculous sign where judgment fell on another and his people went free. Like the wilderness-wandering Israelites, we are defined by this rescue. So, even now as we live in a time that feels chaotic and dark, we can look back and say, “This is how God works.”
He has redeemed you and I in Jesus. But the rescue isn’t over. We trace our fingers over the pattern of a God who redeems and provides for us and lean forward towards the day he is going to provide full justice, security, and peace. The pattern isn’t done. Still, God is working even as we wait.
Remembering helps us face today and tomorrow. We can say what we hope our kids would say of us, “This is what God does.” It’s a pattern we can lean into on the darkest of days. We trace our fingers over the paradigm of the God who rescues, redeems, and provides. We sing with God’s people millennia ago, “I will take joy in the God of my salvation,” even as they—and we—may sit in the dark (Hab. 3:18b).
[1] Genesis 12:1-3
[2] Exodus 11-12
[3] Micah 6:4; Amos 2:10
[4] Habakkuk 3
[5] Habakkuk 3:3-15
[6] Jeremiah 16:14-15, 21; Ezekiel 36:20-38, etc.
