The Underside of His Wings

In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, ‘Flee like a bird to your mountain…?’…For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.—Psalm 11

It’s in your worst moments that you begin to see who you really are. But it is also in these moments that God reveals who He is. And this week, praise the Lord, I have seen the underside of His wings.

Here is my life over the past month in bulleted form.

• ·         Leaving home before light every day
• ·         Working weekends
• ·         Nine, ten, eleven-hour days
• ·         Meeting tons of new people (exhausting for a natural introvert)
• ·         Trying to run a reading center and learning as I go, on my feet
• ·         Being far away from everything and everyone I know and love
• ·        Getting habitually lost in the hardest city to navigate in the USA
• ·         Getting lost at night when it is late and I want to be at home asleep
• ·         Being honked at by people while I am lost; or being made to feel like an idiot for getting lost
• ·        A kid shutting down on me this week (two days in a row), and the junior high kids next door messing with my stuff
• ·         Not getting enough time with the Lord (due to many of above reasons)
• ·         Not getting enough time for exercise and relaxation

All of that stuff hit me this week. It’s like it balled itself up into a fist and punched me in the face. And, while I was down, it kicked me hard in the stomach.

That’s why I cried after I almost hit a raccoon. Last Tuesday, I was on my way home from staying late for training at work, and it was getting to be 9 o’clock (this little early-riser’s bedtime). It was very VERY dark on the Fairfax County Parkway (why don’t they have street lights in Virginia??), and I almost hit this raccoon, and I pretty much stopped in the middle of the road. (I think I did actually run over its tail or something, because I felt a bump.) This guy behind me beeped at me. I kept going but thought I was lost, and I began to just sob and repeat over and over to the Lord, “I just wanna go home…I just wanna go home...” while I waited for the light to change. Pathetic? Yes. I admit it.

It gets even better. The very next night, I got distressed over working 10 hour days and still not getting everything done (problems that have since been worked on by my understanding program manager, praise God), and I broke down crying again in bed. Then I was angry that I couldn’t fall asleep because I was crying, so I cried some more. I called my mom and didn’t even say hello. I just sobbed into the phone while she tried to make me feel better.

Again, pathetic, right?

And it gets even better: today, I had to volunteer at the National Book Festival (it’s not really “volunteering” if you are forced to do it), and I got lost on the way and broke down and cried again. (Third time’s the charm, right?) I was so mad. Here I was in my lease car, which has a limited number of miles, driving around this infernal city, so close to where I was supposed to be, and I couldn’t find it.

Earlier in the week, when I’d had to work on Saturday, a pedestrian thought I was not doing a suitable enough job driving and banged her knuckles angrily on my window. (Really, lady? You’re walking. You can’t have road rage.) Where is the forgiveness in the world? Oh yeah…the world hates me (1 John 3:13). To the world, I am just an inexperienced, unknown girl who is trying to make it somewhere, and I am in its way. In the world’s opinion, I ought to be forgotten and thrown into the potter’s field that Judas’s blood money bought, the “burial place for strangers”—the place where it throws all its worshipers when it is through with them (Matthew 27:7).

Thank the Lord that, because of His son, I do not have to be what the world thinks I am.

A couple days ago, the Lord led me to read Jonah. At the time, I didn’t understand why, but today it hit me (the burst-of-light kind of hitting, not the bus-at-eighty-miles-an-hour kind). It was because when I was lost today, I was seething with hatred toward the DC metro area. I called my mom and told her, “I HATE this city. It’s awful. I hate it! I wish it would just burn up—and Virginia too!” Later in the day, when I wasn’t quite so hateful (and I was more sure of my location on a map), I remembered that I am not the only one who has hated a city to which I have been called.

When the Lord told him to go to Ninevah, Jonah got up and ran the opposite direction. At the beginning of the story, the Bible isn’t clear on his reasons for running. He believed in the power of God: he admitted to the other boat passengers that it was God’s wrath against the storm, and even suggested that they throw him overboard. And when he was in the belly of the fish, he cried out to God for salvation and praised Him, even in all that smelly stomach acid and digested food. So he knew what God was up to—he just didn’t want to do it.

It becomes clearer later in scripture that Jonah just simply hated Ninevah. He thought it deserved what it had coming. In short, he wished it would burn up and be destroyed.

He did what the Lord asked, proclaiming judgment on the city. When they all repented, “it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry” (Jonah 4:1). Why would you be angry when people repent?

Honestly, I think Jonah was angry at God, at least partially, for interrupting his life to give him this assignment he didn’t want. That explains why, when the Lord first approached him with it, he fled “away from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:3). When the Ninevites repented, Jonah said (quite melodramatically), “O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live” (4:3). This because people repented. But all the Lord said back in reply was, “Do you do well to be angry?” (4:4)

What a jerk Jonah must have been. But now, as I look upon the city to which I’ve been called, I understand the fears, stress, and pure exhaustion that Jonah must have felt. He felt things were unfair. He felt he was called to do more than he could do. Then, when the Ninevites repented, he was probably embarrassed because he had been walking around telling them they were going to be destroyed, and then they weren't. He felt angry, so angry that he probably cried and screamed, “I wanna go home!”

Apparently he actually enjoyed being angry, because he just sat himself down on the edge of the city and stared at it with an evil eye, “to see what would become of it.” God made a plant grow up over his head to shade him. Then He caused the plant to wither. Jonah complained (of course), and the Lord said, “So, you’re going to mourn over this plant that you didn’t even tend and care for, and you don’t expect me to have compassion on this great city where there are 120,000 very confused and lost people?” (4:11)

Scripture does not record Jonah’s reply, but the question is rhetorical. It's so rhetorical that that's where the book ends, with a question mark. Go look if you don't believe me.

Do I expect God—the God that I know, the God who is so full of mercy and patience—not to have compassion on this city? That is why He sent me, and other believers, here in the first place.

I don’t think I have “fled the presence of the Lord,” at least. That’s a step in the right direction. I actually came here the first time and didn’t have to be swallowed by a fish. However, the devil has been trying very hard to show me that I am not welcome here. He has been trying to get me to hate this city. And, on several occasions, he has succeeded. I must admit, although I do love my students, I have never loved living here; at best, my attitude toward the DC metro area has been neutral.

If you hate a place, you don’t have much compassion for it, and you certainly don’t care if its people get saved.

But even though I was crying with hatred today, I don’t want to just go sit on a hill and watch DC burn: not because I love the city, but because I love Jesus. And if He wants me here, I will stay here.

That’s the sweet part of this. God knows that my life is hard. He knows because He lives it with me.

Keep me as the apple of your eye;

Hide me in the shadow of your wings.

Psalm 17:8

The more adversities tear me down, the more He climbs into my soul right with me and builds me up. His mighty wings surround me, and I grow more faithful, not less.

Every day this week has had to be an act of complete surrender. I know I can’t do what I am called to do without Him. No one can. I know I will become tired. I will cry in my car. I will be nothing, fit for a field of strangers. So I have asked Him every day—sometimes even with a heart full of despair, or eyes filled with tears of anger—to just hijack my life and make it miraculous, in spite of me.

And I have seen Him working. I have seen Him calm my little spirit inside of me like a mother comforts a child. I have seen Him send people my way to encourage me—strong people in the Lord, building me up at opportunities and in ways I did not expect. Just today, after I arrived at my volunteer post and was suffering from a bad attitude (see last post), I prayed for encouragement. Who should come up to me but a fellow Mississippian who just happened to be a minister as well? She gave me a good word of encouragement. How He cares for me! If He didn’t, come to think of it, the devil wouldn’t waste his time attacking me. Thanks for the compliments, devil.

I belong to Jesus. Although I may not be having the time of my life, and although my life is hard to wake up to sometimes, nothing can touch me. I am free to sing praise to my God. How awesome is that?

We will never find peace or wisdom from our own minds. As Kenneth Copeland says, that’s like “trying to fish in your bathtub.” There’s just no peace there. I know, because I have fallen into the black hole of my own mind this week. All it has to offer me is a worn-out cycle of stress and anxiety. And there is certainly no wisdom there. When we need peace and wisdom desperately, we can find it only in Christ.

I’m not trying to be cliché here. I’m not saying, “Just say a little prayer, and peace will come fall on your head like pixie dust and sparkle around your ears.” What I am saying is that when that seven-year-old student is sitting there with his face in his elbow, unresponsive, we have to say to the Lord, “What is it that I need to do now, Lord?” When middle-schoolers disrupt me and I am angry, I have to ask the Lord to love them for me. When I am lost and distressed and don’t see how things will get better, I have to cry out, “Jesus, I still believe that You are sovereign in this, and I resolve to follow you.” If we turn to Him, He will tell us what to do; He will comfort us. I am proof of that. Praise God!

Life is hard. It is especially hard for people who follow after Jesus. He said it would be (Matthew 7:14). “…they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kinds and governors for my name’s sake,” said Jesus (Luke 21:12). But in the very next sentence, He stated simply: “This will be your opportunity to witness.”

Praise God, that I have the opportunity to witness! I am not just a third party. I have seen His mercy and His triumph. I am not afraid of the devil’s persecutions, because I am following the man who got out of the boat and walked on water in the middle of the storm; I am following the God who came down to earth to touch dead and dying people and awaken them to life. If I did not follow this God, my only choice would be to follow my fears and listen to the world, and, instead of walking on water in a storm, I would be thrown overboard and swallowed by a fish. Ew...bad alternative.

Life isn’t what I expected. If it were, it would be a life of my own creation, and not God’s.

So here is another rhetorical question for you: Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?—1 John 5:5. I pray that you find victory in that.

**Speaking of prayer, I’d like to ask for prayer for my sister, who is having a difficult time adjusting at work and feeling confident. And, of course, you can always pray for me, that I do not submit to anger, but instead go about the work He has assigned me with zeal. I admit, this week looks scary to me. But I know whom I have believed (2 Timothy 1:12). He is good.

A Bad Attitude and a Good Father

Hear my cry, O God,

    listen to my prayer;

from the end of the earth I call to you

    when my heart is faint.

Lead me to the rock

   that is higher than I.

                --Psalm 61:1-2

Prepare yourself, because this is going to be a long post. A week long, in fact.

This week, I have found myself oppressed by various waves of homesickness. It’s been more than a month since I have seen the faces of any of my family or friends. I found myself stomping up the escalator in the Metro station on my way to work, coffee mug in hand, grumbling in my head: “I hate this city. It’s stupid. I hate everything about it. I hate Virginia, too. I hate the whole flippin’ state!”

This summer, I hardly ever complained. I was at home, cooking with Mama, playing guitar, not working. My life was so hard. It was grueling, waking up when I wanted to and doing art projects and swimming all day, let me tell you. Nevertheless, I congratulated myself on my good attitude. I managed to maintain a sunny disposition through the three months of complete and total vacation I had.

I know—an accomplishment, right?

Then I put on big girl clothes and moved 1,000 miles away from Mama and started getting up at 5:00 a.m., giving up control of my daily life to the monster of a service-based job. I totally expected my good attitude to last. Why wouldn’t it?

Shockingly, I have experienced a bad attitude this week. The observable symptoms of a bad attitude are (among others): whining, complaining, general self-righteousness, scowling, and sometimes (in rare cases, or if you’re seven), crying. It’s a disease that commonly afflicts teenagers. (I know none of you have ever had a bad attitude, so I felt the need to explain it in clinical terms.) People give all kinds of reasons for having bad attitudes. However, the heart of a bad attitude is usually selfishness, self-righteousness, and an attitude of entitlement.

That’s right. I said it.

A bad attitude is this phenomenon that happens when you feel like you have been done wrong. Most of the time, it creeps up just when we have convinced ourselves that we are in control, that we are capable—and then we are unexpectedly reminded that we aren’t. In other words, a bad attitude may look like a series of justifiable complaints, but when you dissect a little further, what you find at the center of your heart is the idea that, not only do you believe that you know best when it comes to planning every detail of your life (self-righteousness), but also that you deserve to be in control of your circumstances (entitlement), and that you deserve to be comfortable at all times (selfishness).

Paul said, “Do all things without grumbling or disputing” (Philippians 2:14). If you have a bad attitude, right now you are thinking, “Well, Paul was a saint! He may have suffered, but he was called!”

I got news for you (and for myself): we are all called. We are all saints (hence the constant referral to the readers as “saints” in pretty much all the epistles). There was nothing special about Paul other than that God called him to a more public spiritual walk. So you’re not getting out of this one.

I can’t say, “But I’m different from the apostles.” Because if I follow that statement to its logical end, I find some pretty nasty narcissism: “I’m different….I have always been comfortable and in control. I am a strong individual who knows what I want, and I should have it, but my life is stealing this control from me. I basically have no ability to plan out my day to the minute, like I did before…this isn’t fair.”

“If God loves me, why doesn’t He let me have control, like I used to?”

I told you—it’s ugly.

Obviously, God’s love for me is completely independent of whether or not I’m comfortable. I just happen to have been very blessed in my life. I hate to use the word, but I’m spoiled. God has let me have so much circumstantial peace and ease, and so much narcissistic control over my daily plans, that I am a big baby when it comes to the slightest change. I shouldn’t be acting like the poor kid I saw last week who didn’t want to do his worksheet: “I’m tired! I had to get up so early in the dang mornin’!” Honestly, that kid probably had more right to complain than I do. He probably didn’t get a cup of coffee.

But let’s get back to the “if God loves me” thing.

Finish this statement: “If God loves me, then why….”

What part of yourself are you holding back from your Father because you think He ought to treat you differently?

Maybe you don’t have an answer. Maybe it’s just me. I know it’s stupid that I think God’s love for me depends on how comfortable I am. None of the men who followed Jesus were comfortable. They were nomads (a lifestyle I am beginning to identify with, since I spend 3 hours a day commuting, roundtrip). And they certainly weren’t comfortable when they were being tortured or killed or marooned for their faith. Yet John, in his forced isolation on the Isle of Patmos, wrote abundantly of his Father’s love.

You know how he knew God loved him? Not because of anything God didn’t or wouldn’t do for him, but because of something He had already done: sending His son Jesus to die and finish the work so that we could follow Him to heaven.

Put out of joint….

So my bad attitude, my complaining, is on the surface a result of unpleasant or unexpected circumstances. But the real reason lies in my heart: I have forgotten, for a moment, what Jesus has done, and who I am in Him. I have forgotten that my life was never mine to control in the first place.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.—Colossians 1:19-20

I mean, He’s not just a nice guy—He’s a savior. And you know what He’s saved me from? Having to be in control.

Somehow this week I have failed to appreciate that.

Why is being in control such a big deal to me? Because, in the still-stony parts of my heart, I think I am important. I think I am entitled to be in control. That’s what the TV tells me, right? Every billboard I see says that I am important, I am special, I deserve to have things however I want, whenever I want. But let’s remember that this is a lie. Let’s remember in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t you.

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons….but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Therefore lift up your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.

--Hebrews 12:7-13

Oh yeah, I forgot that drooping hands and weak knees are also symptoms of a bad attitude. Apparently, the recipients of this letter were also having trouble with that. Maybe they had to get up at 5:00 a.m., too.

Let me just qualify one thing right here: I definitely don’t believe that God wants us to be uncomfortable. In fact, I believe the opposite. He wants to bless us. That’s biblical: “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent…?” (Luke 11:11). But I think—and the Bible backs me up on this—that, like a good disciplinarian, our Father wants us to be comfortable no matter what—which is actually better for us. The goal is not for all of our little everyday comforts to line up, for our happiness to depend how much we control our circumstances; the goal is that all of our hearts will belong to Jesus, so that our joy depends solely and completely upon Him—and that is something that cannot be taken, unlike the little comforts of sleep and our favorite foods and even time. The goal is for the Holy Spirit to “strengthen [our] weak knees” by His gentle discipline, so that we can yield “the peaceful fruit of righteousness”—and “share in His holiness.” He wants to take “what is lame”—the entitlement and narcissism that cripples you—and heal it, to keep it from breaking you further.

I think people sometimes confuse the words discipline and punishment. Punishment is just negative consequences in response to an action. Discipline—or discipling—has a higher goal. Discipline is creating a relationship to model correct behavior and avoid problems before they happen. To be a good disciplinarian, you have to make disciples.

Sound familiar?

The best parents are disciplinarians. They are invested in their children and spend lots of time with them in positive ways so the children are more inclined to do what they say when it’s important. A bad parent only interacts with the child as a reaction when the child’s behavior affects his/her own comfort level. A good parent will teach a child to think for himself by modeling good behavior, which requires copious amounts of quality time. A bad parent will ignore his/her child until the child begins to scream in the grocery store, because only then is the child’s behavior embarrassing or irritating.

The world is a bad parent. It offers only a series of consequences based not on our own well-being, but on how our behavior affects the selfish motives of culture—and we develop a bad attitude because we resent this system that controls us, yet we have convinced ourselves that we are in control.

Conversely, God is a perfect Father—one who is so deeply invested in every little piece of our hearts that He makes His home there and bends and shapes its curves like a gentle potter.

Going back in this chapter of Hebrews, we find that, in our “struggle against sin,” we “have not yet resisted to the point of shedding [our] blood” (v. 4). True enough for me. The author of this text says, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings to us so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us”—and here’s the key admonishment—“looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (v. 1-2).

I have never taken much interest in this verse because, let’s face it, I am about 0% competitive, and the metaphor of running a race just doesn’t appeal to me. But now that I know what sin really is—that grumbling, questioning, complaining attitude, which has its roots in my own selfish desire for comfort and control—I can understand the laying aside every weight part. I know what it’s like to run with a heavy weight. (Carrying a backpack while chasing the Metro bus…need I say more?) When I am chasing after Jesus, I don’t want my self-motivation and self-righteousness to “cling so closely” to me. Ew. That just sounds wrong.

I feel despair, because I don’t know how to “lay it aside.” But luckily, the answer is right there: “looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” Not only is Jesus the founder, the reason for, my faith, He is also the one who makes it perfect. Yes, that word is perfect.

Sharing His holiness….

Instead of releasing control to God, I have tended to use Him as a means of control. For example, the other day I was running a few minutes late getting off work, so I prayed that the trains would come fast and that I wouldn’t miss my bus. It wouldn’t have been a disaster if I’d missed my bus. Another one would have come right behind it. But that was the bus I wanted, because it got me home earlier, so that I could do what I wanted to do. The person I was focused on in my prayer was not Jesus and glorifying His name. It was me, getting home and getting out of my work clothes.

But do you know what the most beautiful thing was? Even though I was a few minutes late, and on a normal day would probably not have caught it, the bus just happened to be running exactly the same few minutes late I was. It pulled up just as I ran up to the stop. He let me have what I asked for.

But then there was yesterday. I decided to drive to my school for the first time. A weird light came on in my control panel, and I didn’t know what it meant, but I decided to keep driving until I got to work and check it then. It’s too bad I missed my exit. And if you miss your exit in DC, you just put yourself out for about an hour, because that’s how long it takes to turn around. So here I am, with my control panel light on, and I’m lost in Anacostia, which is, statistically, the worst neighborhood in DC. I stopped at a gas station and figured out that my tires were low, and tried to fill them up, but the machines were broken (which I only found out after I had used the sketchy ATM inside, had to buy some TicTacs to get quarters in change, and was approached by two random men as I tried to figure the machine out). The gas station workers were not helpful or understanding at all from their view behind the bulletproof glass. Needless to say, I decided I’d rather ride on the rims than continue there, so I navigated my way to work. I called my mom and asked her to pray for me as I was driving, because I needed to hear her voice.

But the whole time, I wasn’t really scared. I believed that God would protect me. He always has. I knew my tires wouldn’t blow, and that no vagrant was going to murder me and or even take my smart phone. What I was actually upset about was my loss of control. I didn’t want to be late for work; I didn’t want to deal with putting air in my tires (on the car that I prayed for, no less); and I didn’t want the stress of having to figure out where I was and right my route. I just wanted things to go the way I wanted them to.

My Father got me to work. He got air in my tires, later that day, with no trouble. He got me home. But He didn’t make everything go so smoothly that I felt like I was in a convertible commercial, or that I felt like a celebrity. In fact, I felt like a nobody—someone who was not worth helping. And the world looks a lot different from that perspective. I felt that I was being attacked…and, from what I know about the devil, I can say that I probably was. He has done a lot of things to try to scare me and my program manager away from my school—not the least of which was to try to convince me to have a bad attitude.

Paul wrote, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

Rejoicing in your sufferings does not sound like bad attitude behavior. Neither does hoping. But notice the order: to get to the “hope,” you have to rejoice in your sufferings…which means you have to suffer. When I am comfortable and in control, my life is easy. What do I have to hope for? What reason do I have for God’s love to be poured into my heart?

I’m not saying that God got me lost in Anacostia. As I mentioned before, someone else was responsible for that. But in that situation, I learned to pry just one more finger off of my death grip on control.

So this is what I am learning: how to not just use God as a way to control my life through demanding things in prayer, but instead to develop a daily relationship with Him so that I can be filled with the waters of everlasting life (John 4:14). How fondly John must have recorded these words of Jesus, sitting in exile with no physical home or comfort. My desire is to know the healing power and the joy of that kind of resurrected relationship with Jesus.

Thinking about that makes me angry with myself for giving in to a bad attitude. I have been disappointed in myself, because after a summer of Jesus highs, I have reverted right back to stressing and complaining whenever I see an appropriate opportunity. I’m not saying we don’t have hard days, or that I should expect perfection from myself. I know I shouldn’t. But that doesn’t stop me from being disappointed nonetheless, especially because my “hard days” are not nearly as hard as many people’s, and I am afraid I am much more immature than I thought.

But I’ve got more news about bad attitude days: God isn’t surprised. You may be disappointed in yourself (which only feeds the bad attitude, at least in my experience). But, as my pastor in Nashville said once, “To say that God is ‘disappointed in you’ is to imply that you surprised Him.” God is not surprised at our bad behavior. He’s used to it by now. He saw it coming 1,000 miles (and ten million years) away. I may be disappointed in my immaturity, and surprised about how much I still need to grow, but He is not. And His patience is long, much longer than your bad attitude can last.

Grasshoppers

So, before I even begin, I want to thank the Lord for what He has done for me this week.

My direct supervisor at work is not much older than I am, yet I have been slightly intimidated by her and at the same time very curious about her. Ironically, because I actually had problems at my site (more about that later), she came to visit me this week much more frequently than she would have otherwise, and we were able to share a great conversation. I found out that, not only is she a Christian, she was raised in the same charismatic atmosphere I was, and she loves digging into the Word and hearing the gospel, and she also thrives on Christian community—which is not AT ALL what I expected. Don’t you remember when I complained about how secular this city was? Here is a person, right in the heart of it, who seeks after the Lord like I do—and who will be working closely with me, so that these kids can not only receive the benefit of great instruction, but also the benefit of our prayers of agreement (whether we’re allowed to actually pray together or not).

Sometimes the Lord has to bring somebody 1,000 miles in order to connect them with the work they will be doing, and the people they need to do it with. You know, when my mom said the Lord told her I’d be “working alongside people in DC to accomplish His work,” I assumed He meant volunteering in my spare time.

But God is more literal, often, than people give Him credit for.

I was also able this week to hang out with and get to know a girl who will be leading a Bible study in a couple weeks; the way she describes it, the group is full of women who have the same passion and goals as I do, so more friends are in store.

And speaking of community, I have been struggling this past week with issues of selfishness and self-focus, and my same old sins have been trying to creep back and bring me down; so I knew I needed perspective and grounding, and I prayed this morning for my community. I said, “Lord, I can’t wait for a couple weeks until small groups start…I need them now. I need people who will hold me accountable.” Then I went to church, and my friend group was there waiting for me. Some of the people I went to lunch with last week were having lunch again, so I went with them…and we ended up hanging out for six hours. We were all seeking community—and we all found it. We talked about everything, especially about the Lord. We’re hanging out again tomorrow. It was like my friend group was one of those little capsules you put in water, and suddenly it turns into a dinosaur-shaped sponge. It grew instantly.

Ok, maybe that’s a weird metaphor…but you know what I mean. I asked God for a group of friends; and He smiled and said, “Ok, you can have that.” More often than we dare hope, God’s answers to prayer are immediate.

Even as I write this, I am realizing how much I qualify God’s blessings. I don’t want to set them down here, because I am afraid they will not be what I expect them to be—that this friend group will fall apart, or something crazy will happen at work and my boss will hate me. Which is insane. I need to accept the fact that God is faithful.

Which launches me straight into the rest of my post.

But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”—Matthew 14:26-27

Fear not. It’s a commandment, not a suggestion.

So in my last post, I referenced the story in Matthew 8 that describes the disciples rousing Jesus from sleep when they thought their boat was sinking. This week I reached another story in Matthew 14. Both are stories of storms and boats. Both times, the disciples followed Jesus onto a boat; and both times, they completely freaked out when the storm came. But something is different about this second storm: Jesus walked on water, right in the middle of the raging wind.

Not only were the disciples anxious about the storm, they were also “terrified” when they saw Jesus approach them on the water. I’m kind of feeling the disciples here. I mean, it was probably pretty weird, and they were probably afraid to believe it. But our good friend Peter leaps up, as usual: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water,” he exclaims (verse 28). Those are pretty strong words. If it is you, command me.

Well, we all know what happens next, right? You’re like, “Yeah—he sinks.” But something happened in between: Peter got all the way to Jesus on the water. I don’t know if it was a distance of a yard or 25 yards, but in any case, he managed just fine until “he saw the wind.”

I don’t know about you, but I have never seen the wind. Sure, the effects of wind are scary—but clearly Peter was having no trouble at all, and then he thought about what could happen. He got a mouthful of saltwater, and Jesus grabbed him by the hand and said, “Why did you doubt?”

Jump back to verse 28: If it is you, command me. When Jesus asked Peter why he doubted, what He was saying was perhaps not, “Why did you doubt my ability to save you?” Peter obviously did not have a problem with that—he cried out to Jesus to save him.  What Peter doubted was who Jesus was.

And just who is He?

He is the sole expression of the glory of God [the Light-being, the out-raying or radiance of the divine], and He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God’s] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power.—Hebrews 1:3 (Amplified)

….Yeah.

We can make fun of Peter all we want (which the other disciples might have done), but the truth is, we’ve all been in his place before—if we’ve had the courage to step out of the boat. Or (going back even further in the text) if we’ve had the courage to even follow Jesus onto the boat in the first place. Like the wind, the possibilities for pain, for suffering, are scarier when we can’t even see them—when the effects haven’t even happened yet.

Take a look back at the Old Testament. When the Lord told the Israelites to go and take the land that He had promised them, they sent out spies to get a feel for it, whose report was less than promising: And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.—Numbers 13:33

The Israelites have one up on Peter here, because at least they could see the people they would be up against, instead of being terrified of wind. But again, they were afraid of things that hadn’t happened yet. The Lord commanded them to go and get the land, just as Jesus commanded Peter to step out of the boat (at his own request, need I remind you). The Israelites’ response? They complained that they seemed to themselves like grasshoppers. They were looking at the whole thing from a human perspective—and forgetting who God was.

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.—Philippians 4:5-8

I showed up for my first day at my school this Monday, and when I got there, the room that my program manager had spent 9 hours setting up was filled with afterschool care’s stuff. Like, boxes and boxes of it. Coincidentally, this was also a surprise to the afterschool staff, who were not told anything about it. People had taken a lot of our supplies. And someone had literally gone into my room, took the books off of my bookcase, and stole it. (I had to go get it back, of course—nobody messes with my Dr. Seuss!)

I have worked in schools before, so I wasn’t surprised. My peace here was a mercy to me. What looked at first to be a disaster actually has worked to my benefit, I think…I have met people in the school in the process of getting it worked out that I wouldn’t have dealt so closely with otherwise. Important people, like the principal and the custodial staff. (If you have ever worked in a school, you know that both parties are at least equally important.) As I mentioned before, I got time to bond with my program manager. Also, afterschool had to get rid of a lot of their supplies—and, hey, just so happens, we needy nonprofit workers were there to accept them with open arms. Not to mention that now I have a great working relationship with the afterschool staff, a bond forged through the experience of sorting through boxes full of mixed-up supplies.

He makes all things work together for our good, right?

You know how a couple weeks ago I accidentally went to Maryland, and I cried in my car? Last Friday I had to drive to a different site, which was in the Anacostia neighborhood of DC…and I had to take the same bridge to get there that I accidentally drove on the other weekend. So it was familiar to me, and I didn’t get lost. I mentioned this to my coworker friend, who is also a Christian, and he chuckled and said, “Jeremiah 29.”

Indeed.

I prayed over my day Wednesday, over everyone in my school, and it just so happened that everyone was exactly where I needed them. I showed up in the office for something, and the IT guy (who can be hard to find) just happened to be in there working on a computer, so I asked him about my printer.  

Getting the picture? God works in the little things.

Because I can see His hand in so many small things, I begin to wonder how many little details He has His hand in that I don’t see—how many times a day He works things out for me, knocks obstacles out of my way, makes things smoother for me, while I walk around oblivious to His careful attention behind the scenes. Like a sheep, I don’t understand how much thought goes into my care. I only want to complain about how I look to myself like a grasshopper.

Now I understand even better the verse I posted last week: And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.—Isaiah 42:16

The Lord—the Light-being—is at hand. He grabs us and pulls us up out of the ocean, when our own fear makes us drown.

Again: …in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. “With thanksgiving” implies that you attribute to God (rather than coincidence or luck) the blessings that have already befallen you, and you believe with wholehearted faith that you can thank Him already for blessing you with the requests you will make.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. It seems ironic that “peace” would “guard” our hearts and minds—implying military watch, vigilant shielding. But it makes perfect sense. Let your heart and your mind, where anxious thoughts like to stagnate, and doubts like to stew, be shielded with peace.

Think only about good things. Know that your Lord goes before you, and that He cares about very small things.

Even grasshoppers.