I had an interesting drive to work the other day. Nothing crazy happened but I was listening to Sara Groves’ CD Tell Me What You Know and was just really moved…..by what, I’m not sure. It made me cry and sometimes I really think I still have this really deep desire to see what God’s doing…to see some sort of pillar of fire, to see the waters part, to witness some fantastical miracle. One song, called “Hope”  said:

 “You do your work the best that you can, you put one foot in front of the other.
Life comes in waves, makes its demands, you hold on as well as you’re able…
but you’ve been here such a long long time, 
hope has a way of turninig its face to you just when you least expect it…
you walk in a room and look out a window and something there leaves you breathless.
You say to yourself, it’s been awhile since I’ve felt this,
it feels like it might be hope.”  

Lately, I’ve become more and more convinced that maybe God’s plan for us isn’t as specific as we think. Maybe God simply wants us to pursue Him, His goodness, purity, holiness, and love in a way that points back to Him every day. We may feel called or gifted to particular areas, which we should definitely pursue. But I’m not sure that there’s this one golden path that, if we miss it, keeps us from living  a fulfilling life. It may not be as spectacular as we hoped, but if you think about the simple things God gives us to bring life, they really are enough, like the song says. A little piece of hope that we witness to remind us that there’s more, there’s bigger things past our trials and confusion right now. I think sometimes when we feel God is throwing trials at us left and right, we discredit the fact we simply live in a broken world. Maybe God’s not so much causing the trials as He is redeeming them for His bigger picture of making us whole and making us closer to Him.

One week at church, Jeff said something that really stuck with me. He said that the more options we have in life, the more we fall into the dangerous trap of believing the ‘right’ one will bring us total fulfillment. If we do that, we miss the point. The point is…in the midst of our crawling, stuttering, stumbling, getting back up, tearing down, ripping up, building, and planting…in the midst of all these paths we take and rabbit trails and retracing of steps…God is with us and breathing holiness into the broken places. It’s not so much which path we are on but that we are walking with Him.

“See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” Jeremiah 1

P.S. More news to come soon about our next Soaring Eagle Outreach event in Brownsburg! Mark your calendars for June 13th…we’ll be organizing a community garage sale in which participants can ‘buy’ a parking spot to sell their treasure in exchange for a bag of food pantry items. There will also be booths of local businesses and nonprofits, games, and a cookout to follow. Stay tuned. 😉