When I set out to create this blog, my intent was to be a place to write about all solid stuff that would come out of my times spent in Scripture (in various ways), or reflections on articles I still want this blog to be encouraging, even challenging. It hasn't taken quite that shape lately. Even as I write these opening sentences, I realize the importance of what I'm going to describe about my life lately.
So let's start by describing what, exactly, my life looks like right now, and how it's gotten there over the past few weeks:
I decided to move to Holland into an apartment on 12th street. Five days before I would have to move out of my apartment in Lansing, my roommate calls me with some less than stellar news that she might not be looking for a roommate after all. So I find myself a third of the way packed (past the point of no-return, but the end still nowhere in sight), without a place to move to in five days time in a town 100 miles away. The job that I had set my sights on doesn't respond to my resume or return my phone call (the way they said they would).
It's now about 4 weeks later. I am living on 16th street, and I have a good part-time job. It's been a long story of one step forward, three steps back. But in every instance when I've taken those three steps back and I'm stranded, something comes along to give me a little bit of hope. They've been days when I'm frustrated and scared, and I say, Okay God, what do you want from me? And then, the next day, I get a little ray of sunshine. It's been like following breadcrumbs.
You would think after the way I've seen God provide all this for me, after the way I've seen God pave my way to Urbana, after the way I was able to afford IVLI when it cost more than what I had to my name, that I would be so grateful and hopeful for how this current adventure that I've found myself in is going to play out. I'm back where I want to be and feel at home in, and I get to see how God might use me to answer the prayers I've been crying about for Hope College.
My bills still cost more than what I make, my apartment is not unpacked, I don't know where I'm going to go to church, I don't have friends to hang out with, I'm worried about the roommate who's going to move in next week. I'm worried that I'm being absolutely ridiculous by even THINKING about missions/ministry work. I'm scared to send out reference forms for volunteering with Hope IV. I'm excited to hear back from Teach Overseas, but nervous that they'll actually "hire" me--I'd have to raise almost $5,000.
I don't feel qualified to be asking questions about my calling. I don't feel qualified to be applying for ministry opportunities, whether at Hope or in Russia. I can't even knock on my neighbor's door to ask to borrow a mixer, so how am I supposed to go renew campus? Some people are perfectly content to "worship love and personal dignity." How do I combat love with love?
I went to a prayer meeting at Engedi this evening, and while someone was praying for me, they used this picture of having one foot on the solid rock and the other in the shifting sand. The solid rock doesn't feel very solid when you aren't standing on it completely. It just feels in the way. But I know, I know that when I am standing in His Temple, in His Courts, when I am reading the Word like Oliver, asking, "Please, sir, can I have some more?" that life steadies. That strength is in my veins, peace is in my heart, and words are in my mouth.
It's only when those things are true that I can dream with the vision of God: campus renewal, joy from mourning, freedom for the oppressed, the very earth being cared for: darkness pushed back. I've been trying to figure everything out on my own, including myself, denying the inherent fact that I cannot redeem anything. My pride has kept me from seeking the very one that has the Authority and Power to redeem all those things, and would take this weight from my shoulders.
Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night. -Psalm 1:1-2
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