Christ changes our view of everything. It is easy to see God's hand in what we think to be a great blessing, such as a better paying job, a new home, or the birth of a child. The challenge comes to our faith when the trouble of this world falls upon us, such as when we lose our job, we must move to a home that is less opulent, or when our child dies. How can we see or know God's gracious care for us when such things have happened to us? We can't. But that kind of seeing has never been the basis for our relationship with Christ our Savior. Seeing is never believing. Knowing has never been faith (Rm 8:24; Heb 11:1). Faith always trusts what cannot be seen, and especially when it is not being seen. It trusts a substance that is not susceptible to our senses. In fact, the substance in which faith trusts is the divine promise of salvation in Christ the Son of God. There could be nothing more substantial. He saves us from our sins in both the good times and the bad. Even in the darkest and most hopeless moments His promise to save is good. In the darkest moments in our lives He is the light, not we ourselves. The Psalmist exuded that hope and confidence: "In your light do we see light" (Ps 36:9). Christ shows us that suffering, trouble, and sorrow are not incompatible with the mercy of God.

Being cast down into the darkness is not a hopeless situation for us Christians. For when we cannot see our way clear, when we have nowhere to turn for rescue, when disaster seems our only alternative, when death stalks, and despair prowls about in our lives, only then do we find how solid the promise of God in Christ is. For just when the promise is unseen is it really the promise. We are even able to say that God tests our faith through the trouble He permits to come into our lives. In His hidden and inscrutable ways, He may even employ His enemies to bring that testing to us (Job 1). He does not abandon us in the midst of that testing, no matter how much it feels like He has. God is not constrained by our feeling about Him, but by His rock solid promise to us poor sinners.

God tests us not to determine if we will be faithful to Him, because He knows the answer to that question. He tests us so that we learn faith and confidence in Him. He is the hidden God who rescues under signs of weakness and humility. He Himself has worked that way in Christ, who though God of God also died a humiliating death with no sign of God's promise apart from the Word of God to Him, "You are my Son, today have I begotten You" (Ps 2:7). There is nothing about His earthly life and death that would prove this promise either to Christ or to us. He had nothing upon which to depend but the promise of God. Should we expect more for we who are sons by adoption? What would be more than what God worked for His Son? Just when we are brought down into the Sheol of despair are we truly able to trust the promise of God. Our trust is in nothing but the promise itself.