Musings in Michigan

Sunday and Wednesday evenings I have been going to a Spanish church service. Joy!!! How much I miss Spanish, my friends, the country, the culture…. There is a part of me that can’t express all to the Lord in English; and there is a part of me that can’t express all to the Lord in Spanish.

I don’t mind being home. I trust God has a purpose in it, although I admit I do struggle relinquishing being in Honduras, what Honduras meant to me…But how much I miss it!

God gave me the gift to go to that service, and I was so warmly welcomed. It was such a blessing, and especially after a day when I was just feeling sick and cold (despite the “hot” weather here in the summer) and fatigued and discouraged and confused and exhausted and overwhelmed. God gave me that gift that night.

Part of my heart is still in Honduras. I love it there. But my heart is, above all, Christ’s. I am taking small, baby steps—and such baby steps! Those hesitating little tiny steps, where I totter and teeter and almost fall—toward the place where I am truly content wherever God places me because I am in His will. I KNOW it is the best place, but my flesh still says with a pout “But I want to be THERE!!! Surely that is better, and that is where you want me!!!”

I want to think that there is some great purpose for me here. What I can’t get over is that that purpose may just be ME. Which can throw me into self blame mode: if I was just better, if I was a better Christian, maybe if I learned my lessons more, maybe if I gave thanks to God more, maybe if I trusted Him more….” And Satan keeps filling in the blanks to create an endless list.

But that is not grace—that is legalism and law and works-righteousness.

Grace is saying that there is nothing I can do, that there is nothing I have done that can change things. It is about Christ, who has chosen me and who has done it all. I am in Him. And therefore He is working for my good. (Rom. 8:28-29).

It is also grace to say that there is something more about me than what I do… that I may be here in the US right now, not for some great purpose, but for ME. That I as an individual, I am worth enough to God that He would orchestrate things to teach me, to shape me, to form me so that I can have communion with Him—a purpose of our salvation (1 Cor. 1:8-9). I get sucked into the lie that I am saved so that I can serve God. Rather, I serve because I am saved. (The English major in me loves the differences that conjunctions make.) There is joy in serving, and we are called and commanded to go out and make disciples, to love one another, to serve one another. But that is not my worth. He called me because He loves me.

Christianity seems to be full of paradoxes, and a friend shared this paradoxical statement with me: “It is not about me, but it is all about me.” I initially rebelled against that statement. Yet, she explained it: It is all about Christ, it is not about me; but Christ works all things out for the good of those who love Him, He uses circumstances to shape us and form us.  I get off my high horse and let Him work in me to will and to do (Phil. 2:13).