Winks From Scripture: God’s Subtle Work Among UsSample

God Winks in Our Pacing

Have you ever spent a sleepless night burning a hole in the carpet, pacing the floor?

Where is God when you are suffering something internally? As you pace the floor, He’s speaking to you in a still, small voice—and He winks.

In the Gospel of John, we are presented with a pacer. The man is suffering something profound within. Is the Lord present in this? To tease out the wink, we must know how John adds this man to the story. John does this by manipulating the setting. It reveals a lot about what’s going on inside the character he’s presenting—Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea.

We find Pilate in John 18:28–19:16. Jesus is brought to the Roman praetorium before His crucifixion. By this point in the story, it is up to Pilate to decide whether the innocent Jesus will be crucified. The setting works to show us that Pilate is suffering inner turmoil about making this decision. How do we know? He’s pacing back and forth.

First, Pilate goes outside to talk to the Jewish officials, then he goes inside to talk to Jesus, then back outside to talk to the Jews again, then back inside—and this goes on and on.

Pilate, suffering because he’s unsure what to do, swings back and forth between what Jesus says and what the crowd says. He’s troubled. The more pressure he gets from the crowd, the more intense the uneasiness in his soul becomes.

The setting’s hidden subtlety is a wink. It challenges us to explore our hearts. When we are divided and suffer because of our own inner turmoil, will we choose Christ? Or will we go with the crowd?

If you’ve been pacing lately, you’re at a fork in the road. God is winking in this. He’s in the center of your uneasiness, amid your turmoil, bidding you to obey Him. See your pacing as an opportunity to do what’s right, to return to integrity. Will your pacing lead to further uneasiness or will it lead to rest in your soul? Don’t be divided any longer. Choose to side with Christ.