Here’s what I’ve been learning about God recently. He wants us to have good things.
Mind blown right? What I’ve been thinking about more though is why God wants me to have good things. It’s because he says I’m his son. One of the main names God gives himself is Father. Jesus talks about how if earthly fathers know how to give good gifts, then our heavenly father should know how to do that even better.
This doesn’t mean God takes away hard things. In fact, I think the hard parts are gifts too. I’ve been doing a lot of hard work in Honduras. I’m clearing a hillside to plant coffee. This means cutting pine trees down with a chainsaw, chopping them down with a machete to smaller pieces, then carrying them up hill like Sisyphus. My teams tosses them into big piles to burn to make space for the future coffee plants. And here in the midst of hard work is where I get to draw closer to God because he’s the only one to run towards.
There’s some part of accepting what God has for me that’s scary. If I accept that God wants to give me good gifts I first have to accept that I don’t deserve it. And that part isn’t as fun to think about. Once I get into thinking about what I deserve I have to admit that I know I deserve the weight of my sin, which is death and separation from God. Kind of a lot.
Here’s where I think it’s easy to get stuck. It’s hard holding space for things to hard and good at the same time. Because even though I’m doing hard work and things aren’t always fun, God has still shown up in amazing ways. The people at La Providencia are incredible. Scott, one of the teachers at La Providencia, has taken my entire team into his house multiple times. He’s shown us incredible hospitality. Each time my team left his house it was with full stomachs, lifted spirits, and brimming hearts. He lives an amazing story that he’s invited his family along into. Every time my team would thank him, he would say it was just the body of Christ acting the way it should.
It’s actually been a strange feeling knowing that the hard things I go through are gifts. They don’t get any easier, I just know that it’s going to be a good thing in the end.
