Worrying is like a Rocking chair…
It will keep you busy, but it won’t get you anywhere.
(Title of this blog goes to Stacey Compton)
Every morning I wake up and do a devotion of some sort,
sometimes out of a devotion book, and sometimes out of the bible. This morning,
I used my most common technique. Open
the bible to a random page, see what it says, and hope that it applies to my
life. (I know you all do it)
This morning, I happened to flip to Ecclesiastes 7. I read
all of Ecclesiastes 7, but for some reason, verse 8 really stood out to me. It
says “The end of a matter is better than its beginning and patience is better
than pride.” I’m not sure exactly what this means, but what I took out of it
was this;
The end of a matter is better than its beginning, because so
often things turn out completely opposite of how we originally thought they would
be. The end is better, because we can than look back and see how God directed
our steps, instead of making assumptions from the beginning and taking joy in
what we ‘think’ is going to happen.
Patience is better than pride, because if we have pride from
the beginning, thinking that we have all of the answers, we will let ourselves
down when God surprises us with a plan completely contrary to our own. Patience
is so vital in all situations, in order to let God take control.
After my personal morning devotion, we did group devotion.
The topic of the group devotion was about worrying. In Matthew 6:27, it says
“Can any of you add a single hour to your life by worrying?” I know I’ve read
this passage a million times, but every time I read it, I realize how much I
still try to control my life. I’ve been worrying a lot lately about what my
life is going to look like when I get back to the States in a few months, what
my future is going to entail, what kind of people I’m going to surround myself
with, will I be able to focus in school? This entire year, my job has been to
serve other people. When I get back to the US, I have to worry about my own
life, my own income, my own education. And truth be told, I don’t want to worry
about myself. It’s a lot more fulfilling to push my own issues aside and focus
on helping other people with theirs. I often think about how I am going to take
care of myself, and still serve others with the same energy that I do when I’m
here.
Naturally, I worry. But I find so much comfort in knowing
that God promises me that my life will turn out exactly how he wants it to. He
promises to put certain people in my life, according to his perfect will. He
promises to plan certain events in my life according to his perfect will, not
my own. After all, Proverbs 16:9 says in their hearts, human beings plan their
course, but the Lord establishes their steps. Worrying is pointless, and
everything will work out how it’s supposed to. I’m confident in that, I just
need to be reminded sometimes.
Anyways, in other news; Last night after church I was about
to go to bed, when a few teenage girls knocked on the door and asked to see me,
because they wanted to say goodnight. I went outside, secretly wishing I could
be in my bed falling asleep after an exhausting day, but God wasn’t done with
me yet. The girls’ excuse of saying goodnight was to get me to come outside and
spend an hour hanging out with them, which turned out to be the highlight of my
evening. They wanted to hear my testimony, and I was able to encourage them in
Christ, and talk about all the issues I once dealt with as a teen, and how God
stepped in at just the right times. We also showed each other all the strange
body tricks we can do, and shapes we can make with our tongues. It was pretty
hilarious and entertaining.
Oh, and people love blasting loud music here. The song “Like
a Rock” is playing right now at 8:00 am , and I’m absolutely loving it. I don’t
think I’ve heard that song since like 1998 on that awesome car commercial. Was
it Ford? In conclusion, God is always good.
L8r G8rs.
