“God who has led you safely on so far, will lead you on to the end. Be altogether at rest in the loving holy confidence which you ought to have in His heavenly providence.” – Francis de Sales
Oh holy night and goodness gracious combined where do I begin to recount the Lord’s provisions of the last two months! May I begin with the fact that the Lord certainly works in mysterious ways. For the last few years the Lord has kept my life still, or at least it seemed so. Sometimes it felt painfully stagnant and I felt like one of the Psalmists crying out to the Lord in confusion and frustration with his provision. Of course in the back of my mind I knew, I truly understood that the Lord was setting everything in place. ” For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11
Well just slap a sticker on me; I’m sold. How incredible are the words of our Creator! He is truth. He is light. He is HOPE. So there I was just waiting and I was tired, so tired, and hungry, so hungry. I was thirsting desperately for a community of believers that would, through Him, fill up my cup with His love, and provide me with the opportunity to practice filling up others. Then, the Lord when He said GO, He meant it. As soon as I graduated with my Bachelor’s in Early Childhood and Special Education the Lord threw me into a whirlwind of love, confusion, but praise my Lord so much growth. Six days after my graduation day I left for the summer to begin His work as a camp counselor to hundreds of His little girls. Never have I experienced a more painful and beautiful feeling. I felt as though I was Eustace from C.S. Lewis’ “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:”
“Then the lion said — but I don’t know if it spoke — You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was jut the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know — if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away….Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . . .”
I experienced such a strong, vital Christian community that poured out love without hesitation. I learned what it meant to sow seeds and what it feels like to see His harvest. I have begun to embrace that the Lord is the creator of time and that even our most fervent prayers are subject to His schedule. God rarely works according to our time tables. I learned how to depend fully on Him as I poured out so much of myself emotionally each day and never once had a camper return that exchange. He has led me to the Red Sea where my new job as a teach awaits me two hours from my childhood home and has revealed Pharaoh’s army, time, charging on behind me and He has told me, like Moses relayed to the Israelites, that He is my deliverance.
“Fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
– Isaiah 41:10
I am terrified and thrilled to continue on as a messenger of God’s love in world wracked with a lack of Hope.
“I press on to win the prize which Christ has called me for.”
– Philippians 3:14