This month we have been visiting one of the parks that lies in the heart of San Salvador in order to walk around, talk to, and pray for people if they wanted it. We’ve had many different experiences with this, some eventful and others not so eventful, but I’ve learned over the past few weeks that God can be seen in both.
Sometimes we’re going to go out and try to make a difference and it’s going to be a success. We’ll walk away being like, “BALLIN! We rocked that ish! God rocked that ish!” and we’ll be totally humbled by it. Other times, the case will be the complete opposite. We’ll walk away wondering where God was in that moment and why things didn’t happen the way we had planned.
Regardless of the way things go, God is in each moment.
The second to last time we went to the park, I would say most of us walked away feeling the latter of the two feelings I described – wondering if we made a difference, because things hadn’t happened as smoothly as they had the first time.
However, that didn’t stop us from trying again. We went one more time yesterday. We went with the right mindset. We went with God before us… and before us He proved Himself indeed.
After talking to and praying with a couple people, my teammate Jah Jah and I were hanging around talking to random passersby who would come up to us out of curiosity about where we were from. At one point, a man came up to us to ask us “one question” – “How do you like my country, El Salvador?”. Within minutes this one question turned into the tears of a grown man on the streets crying in Jah Jah’s arms about how far he has fallen from God and how badly he wants to return to Him. We were able to talk/pray with him for twenty or so minutes about his heart and what was really going on there… though, I’m not quite sure if we were able to reach the root issues. However, maybe it wasn’t the proper timing for that just yet. I guess we’ll never really know.
I say all of this to make the point that: God is in every situation, whether it’s obvious to us or not. After our experience at the park yesterday, I realized again how perfect God’s timing is. I thought about the second to last time we went to the park and walked away thinking, “meh, that wasn’t as eventful as our first time”. I realized that sometimes we need those dry moments to teach us to persevere. To keep trying. To keep doing what He has asked us to do, even if we don’t quite see a change in the way and timing we expect to. God will work in His own timing. We need only be faithful in trusting that timing, to keep going at whatever He has called us to, and He will show up. He always shows up.
It was cool to see how things were orchestrated yesterday. How He showed up. People started lining up to talk to us and have us pray with them. Friends we were with ran into friends they hadn’t seen in years which resulted in conversations and prayers about big things. A random boy we talked to was sitting at that park just to kill time so he wouldn’t have to go back to his broken home just yet. That boy sitting there at that exact moment with us arriving at the park at the same exact moment and then feeling the need to talk to him – that displays God’s perfect timing. If we had shown up fifteen minutes later, maybe we never would have run into him. Maybe we never would have run into any of the people we communicated with.
I think about this and wonder what would have happened if we decided not to go back to the park yesterday. If we looked at the second to last time we went and decided not to go because it wasn’t that “successful”. We would have missed out on so much. So many other people would have missed out on so much.
“Successful”
“Unsuccessful”
May both of these words lead you to persevere. To trust in God’s timing. To trust that He will show up. You need only be faithful and keep at whatever He has called you to do. He will show up.
<3 Em
