As men set forth the best wine first, then afterward that which is worse, so does the world with its gifts. That which it offers may please the eye and fascinate the senses, but it proves to be unsatisfying. The wine turns to bitterness, the gaiety to gloom. That which was begun with songs and mirth ends in weariness and disgust. But the gifts of Jesus are ever fresh and new. The feast that He provides for the soul never fails to give satisfaction and joy. Each new gift increases the capacity of the receiver to appreciate and enjoy the blessings of the Lord. He gives grace for grace. There can be no failure of supply. If you abide in Him, the fact that you receive a rich gift today insures the reception of a richer gift tomorrow. The words of Jesus to Nathanael express the law of God’s dealing with the children of faith. With every fresh revelation of His love, He declares to the receptive heart, “Believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these.” John 1:50.

E. G. White, The Desire of Ages

I learned something this week. To explain, I’ll have to tell you the backstory. 

In looking at the sky a few days ago, I noticed a tiny little smudge of rainbow near the sun. I’ve seen this before, and I’ve always been fascinated by it—it’s called a Sundog.  But the mindblowing part about this is that tiny little smudge you see is actually a piece of what is really a full rainbow around the sun, it’s just invisible from where you are due to your vantage point, the clouds/light level/smog, etc. So when you see a sundog on one side of the sun, by law of its existence there has to be one at exactly the same distance on the other side, too. And above it, and below it…sometimes you can only see one, sometimes two or three, and sometimes if you’re in exactly the right place at the right time and all the conditions are right, you can see the full rainbow. 

2020 has been quite the year…everything that’s happened so far has a tendency to make most a little bit cynical, and I am no exception. I’ve already shared stories of miracles and abundant gifts God has given me although I am so undeserving. There are way more that I haven’t even written about yet. And while they’ve been incredibly encouraging to think about, reminders that God is faithful and will continue to be, 2020 has brought with it anxiety that has been difficult to contend with in my own power. 

Last week my dad came down with some respiratory symptoms and after they didn’t go away for a couple of days, I encouraged him to go get tested for COVID. He went to the urgent care and got a rapid test, but in the meantime, the doctor said “well how about we just look at a CT scan to make sure while we’re waiting for the test.” So they did some lab work and took him down for a CT scan. When the results were read, the doctor came in and said “well, the good news is you don’t have COVID, but the bad news is there’s some things on your CT scan that are very concerning.” The CT had showed scattered lung nodules through his lungs and some other features—signs of an illness he wasn’t aware of that could be terminal.

Lung disease runs in my dad’s family, and he himself had four straight years of exposure to asbestos for 40 hours a week. He’s had a dry cough for years and just thought it was medication related. All of these things put together painted a really bad picture of what could be going on. 

In my mind there is a tendency to think God’s been so good to us in the past, that maybe it’s time for the other shoe to drop. His protection has come and gone, all the miracles in the past were Him buttering me up for bad things to happen in the future, etc. It sounds ridiculous to put down in words, but that’s really how it feels sometimes. I don’t know if any of you have felt that way before as well, like your luck’s run out, it’s time for something bad to happen now…Along with everything else that has been going on with the election and COVID, with work and my daughter being sick and everything else, the sense of anxiety was overwhelming. I had my mind set on the worst of the worst, like it could be nothing else. And it wasn’t totally unfounded—I’ve seen things like this happen in my experience as a nurse. 

So he got an appointment with a pulmonologist and as that day drew closer, we were grabbing onto every bit of hope we could find and praying desperately that of all the things it could be, it would be one of the things with the better prognosis.

When he finally went to the pulmonologist, he got some tests done in the morning and in the afternoon, the first thing the pulmonologist said to him was “Pull up a chair and look at your CT scan with me. You see this? This is what normal lungs look like. I think it was how you were laying that made these things show up on the scan, and I think the radiologist may have overstepped in his reading of this.” 

She gave him an inhaler and said they’ll do another CT scan in six months, but that she didn’t think he had any of the things that we were worried about him having. After one puff of the inhaler that night, his symptoms were almost entirely gone.

God is so good beyond our wildest dreams, and He never stops being good. He doesn’t stop blessing us after He’s blessed us in the past. and this week He reminded me of that. It made me wonder where I ever got the ideas that were running through my head before…and I came to the conclusion that they can only come from one place. 

It’s how this sinful world works. 

We see it all the time in TV shows and movies, wherever drama is created to grab the attention or to pull at the heartstrings. The world is full of ideas of yin and yang, balance, luck, “equal and opposite reactions”…ideas that try to make people believe that if something good happens, something bad has to happen. Like anything good is “too good to be true.” And as a result, it becomes ingrained in our minds that that’s how God is, too. But I’ve started to see that that’s exactly what the devil is trying to plant in our heads, to give us a false image of God—when in reality it couldn’t be further from the truth.

God showed me the tiny little smudge of rainbow first, and as I looked for the other one on the other side, the full rainbow appeared. He reminded me that “in him is no darkness at all” 1 John 1:5, and as quoted in one of my favorite books — “if you abide in Him, the fact that you receive a rich gift today insures the reception of a richer gift tomorrow.”

God is good all the time and although sometimes we can’t see His protection and blessings, I’m here today to tell you: don’t let yourself stop looking for them, and don’t let yourself stop looking for God. They’re there even when they’re invisible—and if you’re looking, He will open your eyes to see just when you need them most.☸

Edited to add: a few weeks later, my dad did actually come down with coronavirus. God manifested His mercy and goodness once again: the day he tested positive, he, my immunosuppressed mom, my 91-year-old grandma, and my sister were supposed to be on the road together to visit us for Thanksgiving. Just on a fluke, my mom woke up one morning a couple days before the trip, called me and said, “You know what, I think we should wait.” (Totally out of character for her!) This was before my dad even had symptoms…God just gave her the sense that they shouldn’t make the trip. They would have all been in the car for 7 hours together– there’s absolutely no possible way they wouldn’t have all gotten COVID. To top it all off, the only way my dad had any hint of possibly having the virus was because that inhaler the pulmonologist had prescribed him had taken away his chronic cough for a short time. The only way he knew he was getting sick was that his cough came back. So if he hadn’t had this little aforementioned episode, gone to the pulmonologist and gotten that steroid inhaler, he probably would not have ever known he had the virus until it was too late; he would have spread it to the whole family and everyone at work by then. And it’s possible his illness could have been much more severe without the inhaler as well. Praise God, he was able to quarantine at home and recovered without ever having to go to the hospital, despite being high-risk himself. We serve such an amazing God!