Our Eyes Are On You

But our eyes are on you. 

​- 2 Chronicles 20: 12

The Judeans were a desperate people. The kingdoms of Ammon, Moab, and others were marching against the people of Judah.
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"A great multitude is coming against you..."

This was no secret thing. All of the people knew it. Imagine the panic. Work postponed for the day as the people gathered tensely to hear what their king would say to comfort, to rally. But as he looked out over the assembled families--even the children! the children!--he felt only the sick acid knot in his heart. He had to stand and he had to speak and he had only one thing to say.

"O God of our Fathers, are you not God?" He spoke with all the desperation of a man who remembers legends of deliverance, legends that are his only hope. This was the God who ruled the nations. Who dwelled with His people. Who listened. Who acted. Who saved.

"And here they are, Lord!" The same heathen who had shed so much Judean blood in this land, come to do it again. "O our God, will You not judge them?"
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I imagine this to be the part where the king fell upon his knees and spread his hands to the heavens, where his voice clawed for a foothold at the throne of the Almighty God. "We have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.”
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Our eyes are upon you.

That is the most astonishing part of the entire prayer. After all the recitations of the incredible deliverances that the Lord has done on His people's behalf, after the revelation that there is absolutely no way for these people--the greatest of warriors down to the most vulnerable of infants--to escape... 

After all this, there is this sky-shattering whisper of absolute trust.
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We turn our back on the approaching enemy, on all that we fear. We turn our eyes on you. We are watching YOU.
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O Father, how much I need this today. I woke up today with my body rebelling in every fiber. I lost my composure because I couldn't remember what day it was, because I tried to say the same thing four times and couldn't make my tongue work, because this beast in my body is keeping me from so much I enjoy, because I miss the exultant motion of my legs running over grass, because it hurts me to see my husband so patiently caring for the wife that he dreams of adventuring with, because there are so many what ifs about the future, of having children, of living pain-free. 

And maybe it's too early to wonder about any of that, just as it was too early for Jehoshaphat to worry about an enemy that had not yet reached his borders. But the fear is real and the prayer is real.
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Are you not God?

Haven't you done all this good? Haven't you given me a good and patient man to love me and make me laugh when I'd rather cry? Haven't you given you me doctors who ask wise questions and listen when I speak? Haven't you given me music that speaks the words I don't know how to express? Haven't you given me a church family whose prayers assemble a witness before you? Haven't I seen You heal? Haven't I watched you restore what was broken? Haven't I seen you give life back to those who had no hope left?

I turn my back on my pain. 

It is utterly insignificant.
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My eyes are on you.