Behind And Before

Behind and Before

I was late for an appointment, driving down a narrow residential street shaded by a canopy of trees. In front of me was a very tall, very long moving truck. For half a block it crept along, causing a furious shower of foliage each time its top brushed the underside of the canopy.

Then it stopped. Dead still. Right in the middle of the block—banked on one side by a flatbed truck full of lumber and on the other by a curbed, manicured esplanade.

At first I thought this truck’s driver might be dropping off a delivery. But he wasn’t. He was stuck. And because he couldn’t move, neither could I. As the driver and several workers from the construction site pondered the dilemma, other cars began to stack up behind me and honk.

No one seemed to know how to clear the jam ahead of me, and I could feel my frustration rising. I was hemmed in behind and before, late, and agitated. I got out of my car and explained to the people honking behind me that they might use their time more fruitfully by organizing the cars behind them to back up to the nearest intersection and turn around. But they didn’t speak English, and my Spanish wasn’t quite good enough to explain the plan. And flinging my arms and stamping my foot just made me look silly.

In the fifteen minutes it took for this urban uh-oh to clear, I had time to think. And what I thought was this: I am enclosed, behind and before. God says so. And while my present “enclosure” was most frustrating and unpleasant, being hemmed in by God need not be so. “You go before me and follow me,” wrote David the king. “You place your hand of blessing on my head” (Psalm 139:5). How I feel when I am enclosed, trapped, or stuck depends entirely upon who I am stuck with. God himself has hemmed me in. I am held fast in his embrace. He knows my past. He controls my future. He holds me firmly in the present with him.

It is good for me to be held fast between his hands.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.”

Revelation 1:8