As I write, John is currently in NYC, a much awaited for trip. Tomorrow morning, he has an interview with a great architecture firm we are praying will become a job for him. We’ve been awaiting and taking steps towards New York for about 8 months now. It has been a quite slow but steady journey. There are so many reasons I could list as to why we hope to move to NYC and how the Lord has been leading us there, but I don’t feel that is the point of tonight’s entry.
I’ve been thinking about the adult life. There are so many decisions we make that are interdependent. Some things that are perhaps smaller on our list of life priorities carry a heavier weight when it comes to their degree of which they can influence a decision and therefore, life. I’m thinking about John’s interview. In all of the world, and specifically, in all of Manhattan (which we are continually realizing more and more just how big it is!), John is going to one specific office on one specific day at one specific time. He is having one specific interview with one specific person, and what happens in that will direct the next steps we take in our lives, whatever those may be. Say he gets an offer for a job. Then, we will pack up our lives we’ve temporarily had here in Colorado to move to a specific apartment in a specific part of a specific borough in NYC. Such a specific thing can lead to such a broad change.
It sometimes seems so crazy to me that people really do relocate solely for the purpose of work. They are willing to change the course of their lives and where they live in order to work at a specific job. As Americans, we tend to complain most about work and not want it to consume our lives; yet it often becomes a majority if not all, of our life. Whether blindly or not, we have chosen to submit to a key instrument that plays its forces in what we do with where we work.
It sometimes seems so crazy to me that John and I plan to move to NYC in the Lord’s will and timing. We are the contrary to the typical worker in a way; we have so many more reasons for wanting to move there. But, we must wait on something that seems so small in the light of it all: a full-time job for at least one of us. Practically, it’s a very big thing that holds us back, as we need money to live in the city and support ourselves. In the light of it all, it really does seem small…fully under the Lord’s doing and making, and not the sole reason of why we want to live in the city.
It makes me realize that the small things in our lives are usually bigger than we think, and they are often the true catalysts that bring about desired change. They are the things of which we must wait upon and seek the Lord’s way and timing in. And that is so good.
God, the great Designer, orchestrates our lives in such a way that everything within it, big or small, is interdependent. If we rush ahead or lag behind of His timing, we run the risk of severing the cord that binds it all together that helps us to see His working. We distance ourselves from the chance to understand His intricacies. But, if we would walk in Him confidently, taking the steps He puts before us in the time they are meant to be taken, then we will see little by little, which eventually adds up to much.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
As for us and NYC, we pray that God will continue to open this door of a job for John out of this interview. A job has been our “specific thing.” It’s currently been an agent of waiting, and we pray that it will become a catalyst for change. We believe that He is able to fulfill it to the end. At the same time, we understand that His ways are higher than ours and we do not fully understand His will and timing.
God uses such specific things in our lives as catalysts for change, often resulting in change in broad ways. He uses them to help us to move or to wait, both within faith. These specific things cannot be severed from the grand picture of it all. Just because we don’t see the reason or the connection does not mean it is not there, and we best accept it for what it is in its time. These specific things often affect our whole lives.
God is so good to do this. He works in this way with us personally too. We can often get frustrated with what He puts before us to work on or to be refined. A lot of times, it seems like something we could just bypass for a while or it’s not a big deal. Or, we continue to work on it with little success and wish we could just move forward anyway. It doesn’t work that way though.
I’ve heard it said from the pastor of the church we’ve been attending here in Colorado that if we keep failing a test of the Lord’s, He keeps putting it before us again so we can pass the test. We cannot move forward until we do. That is such a good thing. Would you want to go to college if you never went to high school? One would feel so over their head and wondering why the college people let him/her in without the preparation that was needed in order to succeed in it. God prevents similar things from happening in our lives also, unless He deems it necessary for us to be in over our heads.
A girl I discipled in high school’s father passed away suddenly a couple of weeks ago. She wrote to her friends about how she was feeling after it. Something she said hit me strongly: “I am thankful God has been preparing our family for this even though we never saw it coming.”
God is all-wise, all-knowing, and understands us so intimately. We need to see those specific things in our life and how they are operating as either catalysts for change or agents of waiting. We need to see that “test,” and then work to pass it. He knows when we are ready, and He will use those specific things in our lives exactly as they are needed for where we are at currently.
If John does receive an offer out of this though, then this one thing we have been waiting for, the specific thing of choice of God’s, will become the catalyst for a change and move rather than the agent of waiting it has been. John will report to a specific office at a specific location at a specific time five days a week to do a specific job. And all of those specific circumstances lead to a big change in our lives that have so many specifics to be determined: a move to New York City.
"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
The circumstances of which He has ordained by the words He has given us will accomplish what He purposes in us moving there.
"For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
When God makes that specific thing of a job become a reality, it will become a catalyst for change, and it will be a cause for celebration!
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
And we will endeavor to go forth so that others may see the goodness of the Lord in the city they believe is full of living, but within the soul creates emptiness. May we then be an everlasting sign that will not be cut off to who the Lord is and that others may know Him too.
Scripture from Isaiah 55:8-13
