The Hammer Blows That Mold Your Spirit
by Donavon L Riley
There are times when the path you’ve been following, the one you thought was clear and sure, becomes thick with dust. The holy quiet you once carried within you, that deep reservoir of peace, disappears like a vapor. And instead of that stillness, the heart kicks up a storm—restless, agitated, filling the air with confusion until you can’t even see where your next step should land. It’s easy, in these moments, to feel abandoned, as if God’s hand has slipped away. But this isn’t some curse, nor is it a sign of your failure. It’s the place where the real battle begins. God lets these moments come, not to undo you, but to shape you. Those ancient saints, the ones whose faces now gleam with the light of heaven, they were no strangers to this same struggle. They walked this very path, felt the same blindness, the same dust stinging their eyes.
In those moments, when the ground under you seems to vanish, when the silence of God feels like a weight, it’s tempting to think you’ve gone astray. Despair knocks at the door, and the temptation is to turn back, to seek the false comfort of a safer road. But don’t let it take you. This is the furnace in which your spirit is tempered. Every trial you meet, every cloud that obscures your vision, is part of the same holy warfare that forges the saints in every generation. The struggle itself, the not-knowing, the waiting—this is where your soul learns to stand, learns to grow roots deep enough to hold through the fiercest storm.
So, when you find yourself lost in that desert, when the peace slips through your fingers like water, don’t let fear close its fist around your heart. Instead, lift your voice like a cry to the heavens. “God, I am here—stumbling, blind, unsure—but I trust You. Even in this wilderness, I place myself in Your hands.” It’s not the absence of struggle that proves your faith. It’s standing within it, the storm howling and raging, the dust obscuring your path, saying, “Your will be done.” The truth remains: God’s promises do not fade just because the way forward is hidden for a time. The dust will settle. The storm will pass. The road will reveal itself.
So stay the course. Remain grounded, feet planted on the earth beneath you, trusting even when the ground feels like it’s giving way. The same hand that led the saints through their trials leads you now. And remember this: the dust and the storm, they are not the enemy. They are the shaping forces, the hammer blows that mold your spirit into something strong, something pleasing to God. So stand firm, the struggle is the soil in which your faith takes root. Beyond the dust, beyond the blindness, there lies a deeper Peace—one that the world, in all its chaos, cannot touch.