my life: the story of God's faithfulness

When I look back over 2008, one of the defining phrases that comes to mind is God’s faithfulness. 2008 had some very difficult patches. Working at the Red Cross was draining because it didn’t connect with any of my interests, and depressing because I had been job searching for so long for a permanent position and couldn’t find one. Adjusting to my new job at the homeless access center has been emotionally exhausting and even still seven months into the job, I sometimes hit very rough patches. Added onto that all of the relational difficulties that strained my living situation during the start of winter, and there were times when I felt literally sick with worry every moment I was awake.

But I don’t mean for this to be a depressing litany of woes. Rather, when I look back at the year, what stands out as even brighter than the dark times is God’s persistent faithfulness through it all. When I couldn’t find a permanent job, he was faithfully teaching me that my worth isn’t from my work, but from my identity as his beloved daughter. When I went through periods of feeling very attacked at work, he provided me with friends to pray with me and comfort me and gave them verses from his Word to encourage me. When I hit the lowest point at all with one of my closest friendships in L.A., and it looked like in human terms that the ship was on fire and sinking, he gave me the story about Jesus calming the storm as a promise to cling onto. I am not a big fan of suffering, but I have truly found that when I come to the end of myself, God has never dropped me. It’s only when things have been outside my own control that I have learned more about God’s faithfulness and trustworthiness.

Our intern class is reading the book of Acts right now as well as The Heavenly Man, an autobiography of a leader in China’s house church movement. When I read their stories, I wonder how they could respond to the threat of death, to intense persecution and torture, and to terrifying situations by praising God. What? That makes no sense. But when I think about the many times this year that I have cried out to God in desperation and seen his faithfulness come through, even when it doesn’t necessarily look like I want it to or mean the removal of all suffering, I’m filled with thankfulness to God as well. I’m still wrestling with what it means to trust in God and in his promises of protection if great pain is not kept from us, but I am hopeful that as I continue to read the stories of those who have walked a much more difficult road, it will help me along the journey.

"We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God" Acts 14:22b
“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” II Corinthians 4:8-10

Ps. I want to share a story about God’s faithfulness that even happened these last couple weeks! It was my turn to lead the Bible study for the junior high girls, and it was two hours before the study and I had no idea what to talk about. I decided that before picking a random passage, perhaps it might be a good idea to actually ask God if there was anything that the girls particularly needed to hear. As I listened quietly, a very difficult week that I’d recently had at work came to mind, and I began to think about how my experience might be helpful to them. I opened up the Bible to the book of Luke and came to a passage about worry. Immediately, even though that wasn’t the major feature of my own hard week, I felt like that’s what we needed to talk about. So when study time came around, I shared what of my experience connected with worry, and then we read the part where Jesus talks about don’t worry, because your heavenly Daddy takes care of even the sparrows and how much more precious are you to him than birds. And we read the verse about not worrying, but talking to God about our troubles when they come. The girls are not usually super expressive about study, but they really engaged with the text, and afterwards one of the girls came up and hugged me twice. She told me “thank you” over and over and said that she had been having a lot of worry about her grades, because she is doing so poorly in school. I encouraged her that when she felt worried, she could talk to God about it anytime anywhere. But how amazing is that—that God knew exactly what was going on for her this week and wanted to speak to her about it?!! My own faith is so encouraged when I see God answer prayers and personally deal with us right where we are at.

Precarious positions for nonprofits

My work made the news! (although not for a great reason)
One of the awful things about a recession/depression is that at the same time as individuals and families are going through hard times and losing their jobs and shelter, state and federal budgets are also being slashed. So that means that for non-profits, not only are donations from individuals down, but the government aid they receives is drastically cut at the very time as more and more people need help. Demand skyrockets while supply is stuck at a stagnant level or even forced to decrease. :( Help your friends, help your neighbors, help your family--don't leave it to the systems to take care of them during these times.