It’s Saturday. Finally, after another awesome, yet exhausting week of ministry, we have an off day and head back to the beach. It’s another hot and sunny day in the Caribbean, with the water crystal clear and the sand at just the right temperature. After I fill my belly with the best burger I have ever had, (which I was craving since we have been eating mostly rice and beans since we landed) I decide to play volleyball with the group. As we are playing and my competitive side comes out, I start diving for any ball I can. It’s my turn to serve and I look down and notice that one of the necklaces I was wearing had broken. I wear two necklaces at all times. One I got from my squad leader as a reminder of the strength we have in Christ and the other is one with two charms on it that I had bought for my girlfriend and I. I gave her half right before I left and kept the other myself. I bet you can guess which one had broken. As I look at the vast area of sand we were playing in and I alert the other people I was playing with what had happened, negative thoughts flooded my mind. “I cant believe that necklace broke!” “How am I going to find those two charms?” “This is hopeless.” Are just a few of them that hit me at once. I tried to keep it together by telling myself and the others that “It’s not a big deal.” And “They didn’t cost that much.” But truly I was heartbroken. That was the one special thing that I had to remind me of my girlfriend, Brittany, back home. We all started searching and I started praying. “Lord, please let us find this. Give us your favor. I know we can’t find it without you.” There were about 10 of us combing through the sand. After a while, even some locals started to help, but the more time went on, the more hopeless I felt. We had searched for about 45 minutes and I was about ready to give up, then my friend Taylor looked at my straight in the face and said “I will spend the rest of the time we have here looking with you.” The rest of the group quickly agreed. It truly meant a lot to me, but looking at the sand and having absolutely no idea where it could have broken was not making it easy to have faith. About 15 minutes later one of the locals had found one of the charms. I was ecstatic! The whole group started looking in the area that the first charm was found and only 10 minutes later, we found the other one. I couldn’t believe it. The Lord had blessed me with His favor even though I didn’t have faith. How often does that happen in our lives? We pray for miracles and ask God to do big things in our lives. We pray boldly and ask the He uses us to do great things in His name and for His Kingdom, yet we don’t have Faith in the small things. How can we have faith the The Lord will come through in the big, when we struggle with believing for the small? The saddest part of all of this is that our God is ALWAYS faithful. He listens to the desires of our heart and desires to see us full of joy. He is not slow to grant us what we ask for in accordance to His will and to bestow favor on us. Why, then is it so hard for us to walk in that? This is something I am wrestling with at the moment. I think it’s ironic that I didn’t intend for this blog to end up here but as I’m typing, even now I feel Him speaking to me through this story. My original intention was touch on a situation where I had been blessed and then tell you all about the ministry we have been doing here in the Dominican Republic. It has been wonderful and that story will come, however at this moment listening to The Lord and hearing what he is saying to me so that I may learn from it, is more important to me. That being said, I challenge you to sit in His presence and search your heart to see what He is saying about faith in your life. I think now is a great time for me to do that. Until next time, God bless.
