I sit in front of the big windows and play my ukulele. I’m shocked that I can keep a rhythm. I’m shocked that I can learn ukulele at all. God is teaching me how to do things I never thought I could do. He is teaching me how to believe what He says about me instead of all the labels the world has put on me. He is teaching me to simply enjoy his presence, his gifts, and this life.
I smile as raindrops begins to splatter the street below. Soon a full on downpour has begun. I set my ukulele carefully on the table and run upstairs. I race up the remaining six flights of stairs to the rooftop balcony. The droplets dance as they collide with the cement roof and already existing puddles. Fog swirls around the city, the water clanging against the metal roof drowns out the traffic, and all I can smell is the fresh clean rain. As I look out a signal tower looks like it could be the mast of a great boat ready to set sail. All the sloshing of water hitting puddles and the gusts of wind blowing the rain around makes it seem like the sky itself is swaying back and forth. I hesitate for a moment and then run into the rain with abandon. I laugh as torrents of water splash my face. I spin around and clatter through the puddles. My friend sits by having just come out of the rooftop shower she debates whether she wants to get wet again. Finally, I decide for her (whoops). I kick the water from the puddles up at her and soon we are chasing each other around the roof shouting, screaming, and laughing like idiots. It is a beautiful moment of childish fun. If the sobbing sky wasn’t enough to make us wet, then the spitting puddles surely was. We fight over the deepest puddle clumsily kicking up water in the other person’s general direction. Our game slows down. I lean my head back devouring every second. We stand together and look over the foggy city. We sing. We talk. We shiver. The rain dies down and we go inside. I stand still for a second and soon there is a puddle at my feet. I am delighted by my totally unexpected shower.
I am finding each and every day to be completely and totally unexpected. I’m learning to embrace it. I keep thinking that I have to have everything figured out. I want to understand the things God is showing me, and I want to gain wisdom. I am so excited by everything I am learning and everything He is showing me, but I can’t always make sense of it. There is a colorful, flashy, tangled mess of thoughts in my head. I do not have it figured out, but I’m learning that’s okay. What if God is just asking me to sit with Him? What if I’m just supposed to take it all in and be in the moment?
“How can I know the will of God for my life? Here is what’s simple: enjoy God, and the will of God will find you.” This is what the pastor at church this Sunday said. It rocked me. I’m so busy trying to figure out what God is showing me that I’m missing what’s right before my eyes. I always want to see the big things, but God is in every single moment. The little things that God gives us and shows us are so sweet and simple, and I’m discovering that it is in these moments that I can find God even more than in the big things. I’ve been trying to live for the big blow your socks off, spiritual high kind of moments, but God builds such a deep meaningful relationship with me in all the little things that slip by and are forgotten.
God has been constantly bringing me back to a place of simply enjoying and celebrating what Jesus has done for me. As I’m learning to delight in the Lord, I’m also learning about a seemingly unrelated topic: fasting. Yet, fasting is not unrelated to this lesson at all. In fact, I think fasting is all about taking yourself to a place where you can simply enjoy God. Fasting is allowing God to provide for you. When I fast, I’m acknowledging that I don’t have everything figured out, that I trust God with my basic needs, and that it’s not about what I can do because I need His strength. In the bible, people fast for a vast array of reasons, but in each scenario they bring before God the basic need of food and press into what God has for them. For example, Jesus fasts before starting his ministry (Matthew 4:1-11). Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit, fasted and was tempted by the devil. In fasting, Jesus pressed into God and afterward began His public ministry. Fasting is paired with tempting, mourning, worship, prayer, reverence, and so much more. The role of fasting in scripture is complex, but the act of fasting is simple. Fasting is giving up something, and in that allowing God to provide. Fasting lets us press into God’s provision and what he has for us, and it allows us to enjoy God and the gifts he has given us.
The Truett McConnell University articles I read this week both talked about fasting for God and living godly lives. For fasting, the first article talked about not fasting for people’s praise and not fasting when everyone else fasts, but instead fasting in secret to seek after God. The second article talked about how fasting isn’t about tradition or obligation, but it’s about living one’s life for God. The article states, “‘As I was accustomed, Sir,’ say I, ‘so I fast.’ ‘Ye know not,’ saith he, ‘how to fast unto the Lord, neither is this a fast, this unprofitable fast which ye make unto Him.’”(Lightfoot and Harmer, page 1). So, both articles show that fasting should be all about God. Fasting is coming to a place where it is just about me and God. When I focus on God, I am able to find his joy in the midst of anything. By no coincidence, this week’s hymn was “It Is Well with My Soul.” Which is an incredible hymn about joy and how we can find joy in all situations. The man who wrote “It Is Well with My Soul” was suffering the deaths of his daughters, but as he focused on God he began to sing “It is well, it is well with my soul.” At first I couldn’t understand why a hymn about joy had anything to do with fasting, but then I realized that when fasting is just about me and God, I am in a place where I can have joy in God.
Sometimes God brings us to crazy places to teach us very basic lessons, or maybe that’s just me, I don’t know. All I know is that it took God bringing me all the way to Chiang Mai, Thailand, for me to find so much wonder and joy in a rainstorm, and through that to find that God wanted me to simply enjoy his presence. Looking back, it feels like a very obvious lesson, but being still and finding joy in God is so hard to do in day to day life. Even fasting, which seems like it has nothing to do with joy, is actually all about coming to God in the midst of all kinds of chaos, leaning on Him for strength, and letting him fill us with His joy. I’ve been trying to hard to look at the big picture that I’ve missed what’s right in front of my face. The simplicity and joy of the gospel is in front of my face daily, and sometimes it comes in the form of torrential downpours and puddles on concrete roofs.
