Well I'm back from Namibia, and gone and back from TLC and now getting ready to leave for Soulfest later this week. It's been pretty wild, all this traveling, but every time I seem to learn something new about myself or ministry or something else. The Education of Life, I think they call it. There's no way to explain or summarize everything I've been processing through so far this summer in one blog post so I'll hit some highlights and leave the rest for the ongoing conversations.
Probably the biggest thing I've been interacting with is the sovereignty of God. God sovereignly arranges the events of our lives to bring about His desired ends. This much I know in my mind and I've even begun to base my life on it, but as I continue this journey with God I continue to discover to an increasing fullness the true extent of His sovereignty. While the choices and decisions of the immediate moment seem to be mine, God has ordained them all. God put together our team, planning a unique experience and purpose for each person. God designed the relationships we would develop and the people with which each of us would enter into conversation. God foreknew the pain and emotion those relationships would cause, as well as the lessons that can only be learned on the other side of pain. God uniquely chose me and the 5 others in my Kombie to be in a death-defying car accident and walk away virtually unharmed. God ordained it all, before any of it came to be. Why? Well, that answer I will never know in it's entirety so long as I am still enslaved to time, but I can see some good. I can see a student experience for the first time the peace that God's in control. I can see another student share a testimony and interact with people she never would have met if she had stayed on her original team. I can see a hesitant introvert break down walls by risking to love and refuse to rebuild them after hurt and pain. I can't see it all, but I can see just enough to sustain me so that when I see absolutely no good, like sitting next to John Burke in hospice care thinking of his 16 year old daughter who just lost her brother to the same brain tumor, I can still trust that God knows what He's doing, that all this is for a reason, and that there's some good buried in all this pain.
A few people have expressed to me how much they enjoyed my final post on our Namibia 2006 Blogsite (Reflections). Apparently it's helped some people or maybe they just liked the style or something. Some even said I have a talent and should be a writer. I don't know about that, but I am glad it's helped some people. Ultimately I just chase down some thoughts running around in my head and scratch them down on paper. How God has it all worked out that the circumstances He uses to make me think certain things to make me write certain things to make somebody else find and read them and then use them in their heart, that's all a mystery to me. But then, who would want to follow a God they could fully understand and explain anyway.
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"Before I was made
You searched me and knew my ways
You numbered all my days
And You set forth the steps I would take"
This Caedmon's call song was the first thing I thought of after reading your post. I've been wrestling with a lot of the same things of late. Knowing that my current circumstances will make sense somewhere down the road and that each piece intriquetly comes into play, but it is so hard at the time of the struggle. I can say that I trust God's timing and that He is in control, that He knows what's best... but sometimes we can be so blinded by our current circumstances that we miss out on the good He is doing.
Seeing the Burke's last night was really hard on me as well, I actually wrote something on my blog last night about it too. But an observation that both of us seem to have made is that the little bit of good we have seen in other situations keeps us holding onto Faith that God will do the same even when we can't see it now.
My biggest life lesson of late is that God is faithful. Faithful to complete what he promises, faithful to complete what He started, but He is faithful in His OWN timing. Just as He shows His sovreignty in His own timing. Not saying He isn't always faithful or sovreign, but I think He chooses to reveal the outcomes of those characteristics when He knows we have learned a lesson or are ready for it.
Sorry this is so long... what else is new ;-) but like you I have been trying so hard to process so much of this past month and it's like I can't stop. I'm looking forward to more conversations and seeing in even greater clarity the things that God is going to continue teaching both of us from everything we've experienced this summer.
<3, amanda
PS: I'm glad that God uses your experiences and has given you the gift of writing to express your thoughts because He has definetley used that in my heart. Even though it frusterates me at times I am glad that I don't fully understand God or how He works... as I've heard a bazillion times from you and others of late "God is in control" and deep down I know that I would have it no other way... but you might have to keep reminding me every once in awhile :-)
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