John Eldredge, in his book “Waking the Dead – the Glory of a Heart Fully Alive” shares the following perspective:

Twenty clear days a year – that sounds about like my life. I think I see what’s really going on about that often. The rest of the time, it feels like fog, like the bathroom mirror after a hot shower. …Oh, I’d love to wake each morning knowing exactly who I am and where God is taking me. Zeroed in on all my relationship, undaunted in my calling. But for most of us, life seems more like driving along with a dirty windshield and then turning into the sun. I can sort of make out the shapes ahead, and I think the light is green.

I know that certainly reflects my experience more often than what I would like! Some days, 20 or so days a year, my life experience is like the beautiful, clear sunny day that I’m enjoying today. But more often, I’m in the fog. That’s true for me personally, that’s true for me as a regional minister. Many days I’m not totally sure of life. What are my motivations? What is God doing in the midst of the ups and downs of my life? Am I really hearing him or am I simply following my own whims? Where does He want us to go as a church? How do I make sense of my life when chaos seems to be the norm? None of these questions have easy answers, intensifying the density of the fog in my life.

I’m told it only takes several drops of water to make 5 gallons of fog. Several liters of water would create enough fog to cover a city block! Not very much water to create a significant amount of fog! That also fits with my life. Sometimes seemingly small situations will leave me in a fog so thick I question if I’ll ever see the clear blue sky again.

Jesus’ promise in John 10:10 was this: “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.” Fog days sometimes cause me to question the reality of that promise. But what Jesus said just prior to this adds perspective: “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.” Living in the fog is a great opportunity to face the reality that there is someone who is out to rob us of the life Jesus promised.

I have some choices to make. I guess I could “take a day off” in the course of life, but somehow I think that the “fog” days are the days God uses as an opportunity to take me to places of greater dependency in my relationship with Him, looking for the life Jesus promised.

Fog days are also those days when He has an opportunity to remind me of how I need people around me to help sort out the “fog” in my life. Fog is an opportunity to throw ourselves into deep, meaningful relationships in the context of community, doing life and going deeper together with other people who’ve also experienced the reality of the fog, who’ve come through the fog to see the beauty of God’s clear sky and who can serve to help us see God’s hand in the middle of it all so that we can more fully enter into the life promised by Jesus, come out of the fog to see “20 clear days a year.”