Draw Me

God responded to a simple prayer during a moment of absolute weakness with an image. I awoke with an image of a bow and arrow being drawn back. This was during a time of particular frustration with the vicious cycle of tests and no answers, referrals but not resolutions in my quest for answers and diagnosis.

That day I had an appointment with my second neurologist. I just knew he would hold the answers to my mystery illness. He had ordered a new batch of labs and was performing a nerve conduction test in his office later that same day. Surely this would give us some direction toward diagnosis.

It did not. I recognized the familiar rhetoric and the questions of "who else is your primary care referring to". I felt him giving up, the passing off. But my symptoms were primarily neurological in nature. The findings from the ophthalmologist had started with this specialization. I started to panic and then I felt the sense of defeat begin to kick in.

I went home and retreated to my bed and cried. What is happening inside of my body and why can the doctors not see what is going on inside of me? Curled up, I began to pray. Mostly it was to complain because I felt that God hadn't heard me or answered my prayers up to this point, but that image wouldn't go away. The curiosity roused me out of my position of defeat and I looked into the meaning.

The process of pulling the arrow back is called drawing. Immediately the chorus we used to sing at church, Draw Me, Lord came to my mind. As I read further, the most beautiful details came to light. One was that the process of drawing the arrow back transfers the energy to propel it forward. It reminded me of a message I heard about Joseph and how God used his extremely difficult and unfair situations to propel him into a position of leadership in such an amazing and truly supernatural way.

The circumstances he was placed in were filled with discomfort and had to be difficult tounderstand. Not only was he not going forward, but he likely couldn’t understand why he was being drawn back into places of obscurity and actual prison dungeons and being falsely accused! However, it was being in these precise hard places that positioned him before Pharoah and ended up advancing him directly into the second highest position of leadership in the nation.

The second and, what I think may be the absolute most beautiful detail, is that the anchor point is defined as a consistent area on the archer’s face or jaw that the bow is drawn back to for stability before releasing the arrow. In scripture, the face of God was often translated as His presence. There is so much to unpack in just this one detail of what the presence of God represents.

If you think about someone’s face, that’s what helps you recognize them. The face is so unique that AI has created programming for government agencies to help identify people based solely on facial recognition. The face also reveals emotions and feelings; it defines personalities and our character. When you spend time looking intoanother person’s face, that is where true intimacy is born. You truly begin to learn about the other person. To be drawn to the face of God and study His ways is to become intimately aware of His personality and all His goodness.

And so when I was crying out to God to give me strength to rest, I can see now that He was drawing me to His face. And that looks a lot different than what I first envisioned when I whispered that prayer. It’s not just about me resting in the sense that I have a good cry and then get back up in my own strength. No, He transfers His strength into me – just like the first definition and then he steadies my confidence when I spend time understanding who He truly is and I can better understand His unwavering faithfulness and commitment to always do what is for my good and for His glory. Thank God!

I will never see that in the same way....draw me, Lord