Tuesday, April 29, 2008

• I don't like the cliche line, "God works in mysterious ways," but what I dislike even more is that I'm now finding it to be deeply true.  haha...that's what I get for being antagonistic.  Whatever. 
  
  I've been a little bored at Southwestern lately.  Maybe not bored...more like antsy.  No one has come to faith this semester, and that makes me antsy.  I wonder, "What are we doing here?  Are we just wasting our time and people's resources?  I just spent a whole two weeks teaching students time management.  Let's teach them something spiritual, at least...like how to pray or how to share their faith!  Time management?  Bah!"
  
  Well, it turns out that God works in ways that are a mystery to me.  boo.
  
  One of our student's family has been on the fritz all year.  They have little trust with her because she's not doing well in school, nor is she really trying, she doesn't do her chores around the house, and she isn't home much either.  They've recently told her she has to move out, which means she not only has to find an apartment but she also has to find a higher paying job.  Hard times.
  
  After over 2 months of her needing to find a new job and not having done anything for it yet, I started to wonder what's going on.  We went through her schedule, and it turns out that in almost every minute of her spare time she is hanging out with friends.  Literally.  (O.M.G. WHAT THE HECK?)  Literally!  Even on Sunday morning she calls friends from her bed to talk to them...every Sunday!  Well, no wonder her parents don't trust her and feel like she needs to learn responsibility.  So, I scheduled in times for her to study, spend time with God, do chores, etc.  Yes, my life as an InterVarsity staff worker is teaching time management.  *yawn*
  
  But as I said, God is mysteriously weird.  And I think he does it this way on purpose to me sometimes because I'm so whiny.  hahaha
  
  This student told me she sat down with her parents and showed them the schedule we made.  And then she said, "And the look of worry they usually have on their faces actually started to disappear.  They actually looked at peace for once.  And then on Saturday when I told my dad I was gonna hang out with ___ instead of getting mad at me like he normally does, he said, 'Have fun!'"
  
  What?  There's more peace in her family and reconciliation is beginning to happen because of time management?  WHAT THE HECK.  This is ridiculous!  Who would have thought that time management could reconcile families?  Oh my word, God you're so strange.
  
  Anyway, this is all to say that the measure of our "success" in whatever we do is not marked by how amazing something turns out or how much perceived fruit there is.  God's measure of success is whether or not we are faithful to what he has asked us to do.  If we can be faithful with little, we will probably be faithful with much.  But it doesn't necessarily mean that faithfulness is going to produce lots of amazing things right away.  It could look like nothing.  It could look like failure.  It could look like it was a waste of time, energy and resources.  But that's the mystery of God and his Kingdom.  He doesn't ask us to be great, he only asks us to be faithful.  And though what he asks us to do may look stupid and boring, it's in our faithfulness that God mysteriously moves in ways we didn't expect.  He's taught this to me numerous times before...but I forget a lot.  Maybe one day he'll mysteriously renew my terrible memory.  boo, again.
  
  

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