I would be comfortable, uncomfortably comfortable.
This was my response to a questioned posed to me about prayer: If every prayer that I had prayed in the past week came true, what would happen? Would the world dramatically change? Would people turn towards God? Would the evil in human hearts diminish and compassion put in its place?
Nope. Instead it would be me that would be the comfortable one.
This is something that I've been chewing over for a while now and realized that I feel more connected to God's global mission when I chose to pray for things that don't involve me at all, or some things that I don't fully comprehend. Trying to see the world in the way that Christ would see it has proven a lot more difficult than I had anticipated and much more heart-breaking than I realized it would be. I'm a part of this broken world, I'm human and I make mistakes, I'm stubborn and I hate change, I find forgiveness hard and the healing process even harder. A song called, "Jesus, Friend of sinners" and has a line in the lyrics that goes: "Open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers". I find myself quick to judge someone and then slow to realize how blatantly I've disregarded their life not to be a life that God is working in too.
But once again, God is patiently waiting for me. He's got His hand out, ready to show me the different things that I would miss if I continued to be as arrogant as I deem myself to be. For example, this past friday I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to go to our youth group that night. I was using the excuses that I was worn down from Camp and Youth Ministry class that we'd just wrapped up and that no one would be there anyways and that it just wouldn't be a success because we had absolutely nothing planned.
For you see, the previous week for youth, we brought nerf guns and had a nerf gun war. The three of us leaders thought that this would be the best thing ever, but our two guys thought otherwise seeing as they got bored within the first hour. It's been a struggle having only 2 guys who are very much ADD in the youth group because we're limited to so little, but it was this friday night that God gave me a little kick in the pants and showed me how funny He really can be when I choose to be stubborn.
We had settled on watching a movie (lamest plan ever, but we were desperate!) and set out to Lake Cowichan Baptist church. However, on the way there we drove by a firehall - we drive by this firehall every time, but it was this time that Nancy had the brilliant idea that we should ask if we could have a tour! Pretty exciting stuff, till we found out that the Chief was in Victoria and couldn't give us a tour, but now we have his email address and an invitation to visit again...that's going to be one awesome youth night :) Anyways, so we're now at church waiting for the boys and we're back to square zero of having an adventurous night.
Yet the unexpected happened. The boys came in and the mom was talking about a medical emergency that they had to attend to before coming here. Worried I asked what happened and Nate, the younger of the two (he's 14 I believe) revealed the evidence in a small tupperware container: 3 premature baby mice. Yep, 3 premature baby mice - you read that right. Apparently one of their cats killed a pregnant mouse and he realized that the babies could still be saved so he performed a c-section on the dead mother mouse with a kitchen knife (yep you're also reading this right!) and actually managed to get them out and save them.
They were so tiny and helpless, you could actually see their beating hearts through the skin! Nancy and Jon apparently were thinking that they wouldn't make it through to the end of the night, but I was hoping for a little more. It wasn't until Nate said that He prayed to Jesus that He would save them did I pray a little more earnestly that they wouldn't die - seeing as I didn't feel that I should be the one to talk about death and life to him. But I also felt myself praying for something different here, I was praying that God would speak to Nate through these 3 babies and that I could be there to help him if I could.
So we googled how to take care of premature mice and set out to make them more warmer and did the little that we could with the resources that we had available. Throughout the night as we were watching the movie I kept noticing how attentive Nate was to the mice and how much he wanted to make sure that they were ok. What also surprised me was that those 3 mice started moving and squeaking, there was one mouse in particular which I thought was the weakest one but he was the first to make a sound and moved the most which I thought was remarkable.
By the end of the night I was basically speechless with what God had taught me. While I was stubborn in my unwillingness to go, I discovered a gift that God would teach me only through someone like Nate:
There is hope. Hope is never lost. By the end of the night I thought that those mice could make it at least through the first night maybe even the weekend - they could experience life and compassion from a boy all the more willing to care for them. I knew Nate was a sweet kid but I hadn't been expecting something so profound to come from such an incident as a cat killing a mouse. He took the time to notice and was able to keep life going.
Another thing that struck me led me back to Matthew 6:26. If God cares for the tiniest of mice,
how much more therefore are we?
God is so good! In so many ways, and also currently in preparation for our missions trip. Recently I've been expressing my fear to God about Mexico and not feeling that I can do this at all. Thankfully God has assured me that I can't do it at all...fantastic (there was a little bit of a sarcastic ring to that when I figured that out.), yet He told me to not fear. 1 John 4:18 talks about perfect love casting out fear. I realized that I hadn't been relying enough on Him and His perfect love in my life, and now that I am beginning to understand, I'm currently trying to figure out how to let go entirely of myself and cling to God...I let you know what happens if I can.
How much more therefore...
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