Friday, November 27, 2009

This Thanksgiving

We all sat in a circle and went around the room saying what we were thankful for. Of course we were thankful for our family, friends, and good health, promotions, etc. Do not think for one second that I am discounting those amazing blessings, but it was incredibly amazing what other kinds of things people were saying.

Every day I am so encouraged by my church family at Grace Harbor Community Church and the hearts these people have. It’s amazing to see how much more we have, as a church, truly started trusting in God's providences and grace, even when it’s dark and scary and hard and strips us from all we've got. It was encouraging to hear people talk about how thankful they were for the hard situations in their lives this year. For example, Jess was talking about her surgery and how she was thankful that God has used the pain from it to show her how to trust Him and lean on him for strength. Wendy talked about the blessings that have come from her blindness. Rachel talked about how she was just thankful to still be thankful and not bitter after a rough year.

For me personally, I have learned this past year to be thankful when God doesn’t answer my prayers the way I would want Him too. Looking back, if He had given me a certain relationship that I strived so much for- I definitely wouldn’t have grown leaps and bounds like I did, coming to a more complete realization that Christ is my all. In fact, I would still be trapped in the pattern of needing people more than loving them. If God had taken people out of my life because I didn’t think I could handle the hurt, then I wouldn’t have learned to love a lot more unconditionally those that I didn’t think I could even like. If God had allowed me to get accepted for Switzerland, then I wouldn’t be going to Russia for missions, and getting co-op credit for it -ten times better. Even thinking all these things, I am just humbled, almost ashamed for my reactions when things first did not go my way.

Looking at circumstances in this light has caused me to take a general step back and realize that I cannot see the complete bigger picture. It makes me thankful for God's perfect, loving, and violent grace in my life- that everything physical can be stripped away from us but we still have the Gospel. It’s definitely really hard to be seriously disappointed by something you thought was going to happen, and then look at it with thanksgiving- but its truth, it’s the way we should respond. We need to grasp that God knows what He is doing. He loves us, and sometimes in loving us, He has to take crap out of our lives or take us on a different path so we can mature and focus more clearly on Him.


Happy Thanksgiving... what are you thankful for?

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