Saturday, December 18, 2010

travelling thoughts

This is yet another post about time.  How it doesn't seem to change, but how our perception of it does.  Maybe it won't be so heavy as that.  I just had a thought as I travelled to Indiana to spend christmas with my family, to have a white christmas.  I'll get to that in a bit, but I want to share that I'm done with my semester.  I wish I could say I was halfway done with coursework, but I can't.  I'm afraid that I have a lot left, probably at least two years and a semester for quals. 

It's weird that this program is so much longer than my masters but seems to be going much faster.  At this point in my masters it felt like I had been in school for years and it was only three semesters with one to go.  Here I'm three in and have like four or five to go and it doesn't bother me.  Actually I look forward to learning more over the next few years.  

So, during my travels to Indiana I had a layover in Detroit, at DTW actually in the McNamera terminal.  This is by far my favorite terminal.  It has a lot of personal meaning to me.  The first time I flew on my own was when I flew to Ohio to visit BG for my masters (my family weren't flyers so I started late).  I remember all the anticipation, life change, excitement, and most of all a time of waiting on the Lord.  I was waiting to see if he'd permit me to go to BG for grad school.  I returned from that trip not knowing what he was going to do.  I just prayed and waited.  Then I got the call that they were going to offer me an assistantship which opened that door wide open.  

Then in BG, Detroit was my go to airport.  After every semester I flew home and it was DTW that started the trip.  I remember specifically after my first semester the relief of just finishing the semester as it was a hard semester, actually the hardest, and I did laundry until midnight staying up until Jason arrives to go to the airport at 3:30 to fly out at 6.  

I took a walk out to the end of concourse B and prayed.  I thanked the Lord for how he's been faithful to me in my life.  That all the hard times I went through and went to that airport to escape them.  I prayed over that place.  I felt peace.  I haven't been there in years and it felt like it.  It felt like almost another life.  Another me.  

I'm so thankful for how God has changed my heart over the last year and a half.  He brought me to the end of myself.  I was ready to call it quits.  When I moved to Texas I was done with God, I felt stone-cold dead.  That what happens when you run from him for a long time.  He let me.  



Romans 1:21-25

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.




But that’s not the end of the story. He reclaimed me. I’m not saying that God ever really left me, but that he gave me over to myself. It wasn’t until I confessed and repented that he made himself known to me again. I never want to be in that place again. With only his grace could I ever not. He firmly is my rock and my redeemer. Psalm 62 is in my heart right now.


For God alone my soul waits in silence;
From him comes my salvation.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
My fortress; I shall not greatly be shaken.


When I’m not outrightly sinning or running from God and putting my trust in him it’s so much easier to see what he’s up to. Life begins to look different. There aren’t as many problems (that I attempt to control) but are more trials (which God glorifies himself in). I think of Matt Chandler and how faithful God has been through him to glorify himself through Matt’s affliction. How Matt knows that and lets that wash over him, give him strength and hope, and is allowed to be a conduit of grace and power. When I see a trial I can see a bit into what God’s showing me. Not that I’m not a flawed human who still desires to please myself, but that I can see trials in a different light.

Right now, God is calling me into a time of patience. I love/hate it. I love it in that God is shaping me, he loves me, he wants me to be more like him and this is what he’s showing me now. This is the privilege he’s bestowed on me right now, to be patient in him. I hate it because I want things now, this second, I don’t want to wait. But he’s calling me to wait, so I try to. I’m not perfect at it, but he gives grace whether I fail or succeed. He knows me, he knows how I’ll react. So no matter what I want, I’m clinging to Psalm 62. For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

“Forget about what’s happened! Don’t keep going over old history. Be alert! Be present! I’m about to do something brand new. It’s bursting out. Don’t you see it? There it is! I’m making a road in the desert and rivers in the badlands.” Isaiah 43:18-19 The Message