A few years ago, my family and I moved to the desert in Arizona. Most of the time, we live under drought conditions. We can go months at a time without a drop of rain.
Spiritually speaking, sometimes the Christian life can feel like there are lengthy seasons of drought. During those times, it does not seem like God is doing much in our life.
There was just such a season for Jesus disciples. It seemed like Jesus was basically doing little to nothing. We read in John 12:14-15, “Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!”” With perhaps a few million-people packed into Jerusalem for the holiday of Passover, it looked like Jesus was going for a pony ride. Not preaching. Not healing. Not casting out demons. Just going for a ride.
But, after Jesus died on the cross and resurrected from death, the disciples realized that God was at work and they just did not see it at the time. In John 12:16 we read, “His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.” Riding on the donkey, Jesus was fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah 9:9 which says, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you;righteous and having salvation is he,humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
People were supposed to wait for their King, Jesus Christ, to ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. When Jesus sat atop that animal, he was not wasting time but rather doing God’s work and fulfilling God’s word.
The point is simply this: God is always at work, but sometimes we don’t see it until later. That is why faith is about trusting that God is working even though that is not what we are currently seeing.
Looking back on your life, in what ways have you seen that God was at work even when you were unaware of it at the time?