For my first official blog, I thought I would write about something very relevant to my present walk in life.
God’s perfect timing is always perfect. What a profound thought.
I am forced to sit in awe as I ponder the past events of my life and the way that God has intertwined my life experiences to bring me to the place I am at today. Being that just the other day was the one-year anniversary of my senior piano recital, I have been thinking even more than usual about the way that God always knows. Exactly one year ago, I was feeling the weight of a two-ton load lifted off my shoulders because of the fact that my recital, which I had worked so endlessly towards completing, was over! There was joy in that, because it had seemed such a dauntingly impossible task. At the same time, I was carrying an even bigger burden of not knowing the answers to so many haunting questions.
What was the most annoying and frustrating question that never ceased to let my mind rest at ease? “What are you doing with your life now?” All of you who have done the college thing know this question. All of you who have ever moved on to something new in life know this question. It stares us in the eye, demanding an answer, OR ELSE! I don’t know what was worse; that my teachers, family, and friends wanted an answer or the fact that I just couldn’t find it. I asked God every day to show me the direction He wanted me to take, but the answer I wanted never came. I sought him desperately. I fell to my knees and cried for him to just show me something, anything really. A friend of mine even walked in on me bawling my eyes out at one point, and still there remained silence. My faith began to falter, and God seemed a million miles away. I knew I loved him very much and that He loved me, but little else accompanied that.
The problem: I wasn’t ready to surrender. I didn’t even know what that looked like in all practicality.
The best thing about God is that He never gives up on us and his love always remains faithful. Even when I found myself unable to have the words to converse with him, I knew his love remained.
One of the most beautiful things God did to show his love for me when I couldn’t hear him was that He spoke to others about me. A friend of mine whom I trust with all of my heart was given a vision about me, and I knew it was of God from the moment she first told me of it. The basic idea was that the Lord wanted to take me somewhere, but He had to first refine me and fill my whole being with pure gold. There were certain poisons in my life that needed to be cleaned out, and God had to bring me back to the place of knowing the truth.
So to reference back to my initial statement, God’s perfect timing is always perfect. He always knows what He’s doing; we are the ones that fail by trying to take matters into our own hands. The Lord’s answer for me during my time of questioning was simply to BE STILL AND REST. Funny, isn’t it? All the while I thought I wasn’t receiving an answer, He was giving me one!
I was struggling with having faith simply because I was struggling to obey. It was when I finally learned to say, “Lord, take me. Use me. My life is yours, and I leave it in your hands,” that He was able to fill me with perfect peace. And now as I find myself a part of this team that is going around the world, I have realized that this is where God wanted me all along! However, He had to first take me through some junk to break me and bring me to a place of being able to truly make him my Lord.
And now, to end with the Lord’s words rather than mine seems fitting.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-11
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
