“Here I am, LORD! Send me!”
(crickets)
“Seriously! I’m right here! Totally packed and ready to roll. Send me!”
(crickets)
“Look, here’s the thing, I’m convinced You have a plan for me and I am completely ready to do what ever You say. I just need a hint.”
(crickets)
“…a nudge, a wink, a nod, a random note on my windshield, ANYthing.”
(crickets)
“I don’t want to pester You, but I wonder if maybe Your plans for me perhaps got a little delayed. That’s cool. Stuff happens. If You could, though, could You give some sort of an ETA on the arrival of Your plans? I would hate it if I was away from the phone when things start cranking. Just so I can plan, You understand?”
(crickets)
As much as I dislike the steady chirp of crickets these days, I know that faith walking is more of a loop than a linear journey. I’ll get back to mountain tops and days on end when Scripture comes alive in my hands and sears my soul. There is much to be gained when you can rest easy even when the future is a hazy fog of crickets.
God is not sleeping. He does not rest. It feels like He is otherwise occupied sometimes, but you can feel that way and still know in your soul that He just as present as ever. If you’re sitting with crickets right now, know that I am too. Faith is the evidence of things unseen, and if there were no crickets, we would never exercise faith.
I am listening to crickets right now, as I wind up my degree and have to decide where to send my CV. But it helps to have done this before: we waited anxiously for four and a half years before God tapped us on the shoulder to go to Yendi. It felt as if I was the ugly girl at the dance… but now I know that the mission field for which God was preparing us was not yet ready for us to arrive, and our kids really needed to be older to handle the parental neglect that was inevitable due to the complex situation there.
It is nice to have hindsight on previous cricket seasons. God is always working His plan for our good and His glory. He is, but it doesn’t always look that way. I think my favorite part of seasons like this is how often the skies clear up and answers are given in a flood. I look forward to a day like that for you.
LOL…I have been having a very similar conversation (can you call it a conversation when you don’t think you’re hearing anything in response?) with God in recent weeks.
And I must say it brings to mind the saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”
After weeks of earnestly expressing my desire to more fully live out God’s will for my life, I wound up in just about the last place I’d have ever expected to be, and I still have no clue what God’s got in mind.
I am quite literally taking one barely discernible step at a time and trusting, that although I really, really can’t fathom what He’s up to, He knows better than I and it’ll all unfold in His time.
Thanks, Amy, for reminding me that me and my crickets aren’t alone.