Nature is good at glorifying God. I mean, really good. I go on walks here in Georgia all the time, and I keep seeing water that perfectly, to the last detail reflects the trees and sky and clouds above. Tall, stately woods boasting of their Creator’s faithfulness and never-failing care. Fragile wisps of fog walking - dancing! - on top of the lake. Birds singing absolutely all the time.
And I think to myself, “Dude, I wish I could be that consistent.”
This whole living for the glory of God thing is harder than it sounds.
I have my good days and my bad days. My good minutes and my bad ones. Trying not to shake the whole house at night cause I just got off the phone with someone who knows someone else who runs a camp - a real, live camp! - in Haiti quickly succumbs to, “Time line? I don’t know how to make a time line. I barely managed the business plan. Now you want me to not only know what I’m doing but when I’m going to do it?” A profound, deeply helpful conversation is followed by a simple question that I don’t know the answer to and can’t seem to find. Wisdom gives way to foolishness. Peace bows to impatience. Joy plummets into the pit of despair where they only feed you bread and water every other week.
How many details do you need, and how much faith? How far do you look into the future, and how many minutes a day do you ask God what He wants you to do next? What if I don’t say what I need to say in a certain, very important conversation? What if I give people the wrong impression? What if I don’t give them any impression at all?
These are the questions I’d rather not answer. Questions I’d really like to drown in the lake while I lock myself in a closet and hide.
It would be so much easier that way.
But, of course, I can’t get to Haiti if I’m sitting in a closet.
So, every time I’m thinking about giving up on this whole Haiti venture and doing something I’m really good at - like opening a restaurant or scuba diving - God keeps saying, “My strength is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’
“Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
. . . Even if I haven’t figured out the stupid time line yet.
