Through Smoke

I have a friend. A dear friend, who has experienced a deep and cutting loss in her life. She is a strong friend who is learning what it means to heal in the face of incredible loss. We recently had a conversation about the point of prayer. Why do we pray if, when we think we need it most, it appears to go unanswered? Why do some prayers have answers and others don't? If you believe God's will is Sovereign do our prayers even have any affect? These are the questions we wrestled with and to which neither of us had many answers.

Then I heard the song below....

Through Smoke - NeedtoBreath

Before the truth will come to fill our eyes
The wool comes down in the form of fire
And when the answers and the truth have cut their ties
Will you still find me
Will you still see me through smoke, through smoke

I was born in a house in a town just like your own
I was raised to believe in the power of the unknown
'Cause when the answers and the truth take different sides

Will you still find me
Will you still see me through smoke
Through smoke (x3)

When their whispers have painted pictures that
Make you doubt what you once believed in
Paper stories that hide the glory
To keep us searching
Through smoke

Who do you believe when you can't get through (through smoke)
When everything you know seems so untrue (through smoke)
When I'm lost in a place that I thought I knew (through smoke)
Give me some way that I might find you (through smoke)

Who do you believe (through smoke)
Everything you know
When I'm lost in a place (through smoke)
Give me some way


It made me think...sometimes those hard and devastating situations are the smoke and what God asks of us is that we still search for Him...even if we have no answers. Prayer is often the medium for those times in which we search blindly, feeling with hands outstretched before us as our eyes are choked by tears from the stinging smoke. And once we find Him behind the smoke, we will have the hope and endurance needed when the skies get hazy, the air gets heavy, and we can't see yet again.