What a cathedral hidden in the mist taught me about faith

I recently had to commute across the Cambridgeshire Fens regularly for work. If you are not familiar with them, they are flat – and I mean really flat! There are no hills and few opportunities to practise our hill starts! On a clear day, you can see for miles and miles, and the richness of their colour palette is breathtakingly beautiful, irrespective of the season. The journey inspired me to look around and give thanks for all that God had brought me, praising Him for His majesty and generosity to me.

A remarkable feature of the landscape in this area is Ely Cathedral, which would appear on the horizon and serve as an “ever-fixed mark” on my drive. If you haven’t seen it, it is one of those buildings that takes your breath away – particularly when you pair it with the knowledge that this was made without electricity, CAD or microchips. It is over a thousand years old and boasts not only one of the longest naves in Europe but also a spectacular octagonal tower.

READ MORE: How Cathedrals got me through university and why I’ll be watching ‘Britain’s Great Cathedrals: To the Glory of God’ this season

As a young person, I had the privilege of spending a lot of time in this building. I may not have appreciated all the individual architectural features or understood the scope of the project that medieval stonemasons undertook, but its stature and space could not fail to impress. As an adult, I have taken visitors to see it and deepened my appreciation; I’ve also taken a tour up the West Tower, admiring further the inner and outer beauty of this ancient landmark.

Mists are also a regular feature of this rich, farming land. They seep across the landscape and ensconce agricultural machinery and farm buildings, providing a very diminished view. Checking the horizon, I would sometimes have no indication that the cathedral was there at all – a dominant creation completely blocked from my view by millions of individually inconsequential water droplets. I never once doubted that it was there, though: through my time inside the building, familiarising myself with the pillars, windows, ceilings and towers, and having used it as a point of reference on my regular journeys, it never occurred to me that it might have disappeared entirely. I could not have been persuaded to suspect that it wasn’t really there or was perhaps something that I had just imagined or dreamt.

READ MORE: In the light of the Bangor Cathedral scandal, how can women stay safe in spiritual spaces?

One evening, God used this picture of a familiar landmark obscured by a veil of vapour to speak into my relationship with Him

One evening, God used this picture of a familiar landmark obscured by a veil of vapour to speak into my relationship with Him: there are times when His presence is benevolently clear, but there are also times when I can’t see, feel or hear Him. I may search my horizons, having encountered Him palpably in the past, but not seem to grasp a sense of His presence. However, those clear encounters that I have had with Him serve as evidence to me that I don’t always need to summon up concrete proof of His existence. I am simply confident of His presence, visible or otherwise.

READ MORE: Through my daughter’s health journey, all my hope is in Jesus

When my daughter was just five months old, she developed pneumococcal meningitis. 

When my daughter was just five months old, she developed pneumococcal meningitis. The situation began with what seemed like “a bit of a cold” but escalated very quickly to a floppy body and a swollen fontanelle. As a mum with no medical knowledge or skills, it was completely beyond me to help her in any way. Before getting in the ambulance, I grabbed my contact lens solutions, glasses and a list of prayer chain numbers; I had absolutely no sense of God’s presence in the moment, but my encounters with Him – through Bible readings, church services, small group fellowships, worship groups and prayer – gave me no doubt that I could turn to Him.

I couldn’t hear God’s voice and had no prophetic words of comfort, but because I had invested time with Him on the “easy” days, there was no reason to doubt His presence on the “tough” ones. I used the address book to contact friends on prayer chains and handed my daughter over to Him. The “mist” was irrelevant: I knew Him well enough to know He was there.