Those of us who follow Christ believe him when he says he’s always with us. He also says he’ll never abandon us or fail us and that he surrounds us with his presence. We believe all of it.

The problem comes in trusting this One we can’t see or feel. In our recent days of missing Mary, people have lovingly said, “Hold tight to Jesus’ hand.” Or, “I’m praying you’ll feel God’s everlasting arms around you.”

Both of these word pictures are sanctioned in Scripture, and we want to trust them as real, but there’s no visible proof – and sometimes it’s hard.

(Michelangelo tried to visualize the invisible, above.)

God knows of our human limitations and the difficulty of relating to an unseen God. After all, Jesus was human, too, and experienced these same limits. Even during his torturous hours on the cross, his cries were to his invisible Father. So how do we bridge this gap? How do we believe he is truly with us?

The answer? It’s by way of the sneak-peeks he gives.

I believe God sometimes demonstrates that he’s close to us in real-time…. in touchable, visible ways. Our part is to notice and ponder what he shows us, deciding for ourselves whether or not to attribute these things to him.

During Mary’s sudden, short decline, he gave us several of these powerful sneak-peeks that we believe indicated his closeness. For example – Julia had given her mom a gardenia plant for Mother’s Day in May.

Mary had put it in a stone-covered pot, writing a Scripture verse around the rim: “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord Himself, is the Rock eternal.” (Isaiah 26:4)

Through the summer it had bloomed beautifully under Mary’s watchful care. But then her illness escalated, and tending to the gardenia fell by the wayside.

When Julia arrived to care for her mom, she saw that her gardenia-gift was needy. Taking a moment to pluck off the many dead blossoms, she noticed it didn’t have even one promising bud. But then Mary’s illness drew her attention away.

And then Mary went to heaven.

In the painful first hour that followed her death, after Hospice and funeral home personnel had come and gone, none of us knew what to do. Then, as we stood around in the kitchen without a plan, someone said, “Hey! Look at that plant!”

We were dumbfounded to see a fully opened, perfectly formed gardenia blossom on Mary’s now-healthy plant.

Some would call that a coincidence or a freak of nature. We’d rather give the credit to our unseen God who uplifted us in a low moment with the assurance that he was close by. And against all logic, we had a sweet-smelling gardenia blossom to prove it.

“Be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)