Hope Surprised

Going out into the vast unknown of Christ's service is always a daunting thing, but I confess that I have tended to downplay what we have been sent to do in Guatemala. Putting on a Vacation Bible School for some orphan children, building a chicken coop or two, and doing a little painting and cleaning doesn't seem like all that big of a deal. But something happened today that brought everything into stark reality for me.

My wife and I adopted a baby girl and as a result were involved in a lengthy court battle that presented difficulties and trials for us in many different ways. This has gone through two courts and is now in the VA Court of Appeals, and we have been praying throughout this summer that the court would dismiss the case (i.e. that justice would be served) before we went on our mission trip to Guatemala. We were just talking a couple of days ago about how it looked like that prayer wouldn't be answered after all. I think we felt a little disappointment, but the outcome was kind of to be expected. After all, what's sacred about us going on this mission trip? Just because we pray for something means God will grant it?

I was in a meeting this afternoon at 12:30pm and my phone rang. It was our attorney leaving me a voicemail, and for a moment a wild thought rose in my mind: "What if God answered our prayer and the case has been dismissed?" As soon as the meeting was over I called him back, and he said, "I have just received notice that the VA Court of Appeals has dismissed the case against you. Everything is going to be OK." God had brought the case to an end, the day before we got on a plane to go to Guatemala.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Astonishment, gratitude, disbelief, adoration, anticipation, surprise - all these feelings came flooding over me in an impossible moment of supreme rejoicing. God had answered our prayer, and he had done it in a way such that nobody but he could receive the glory for it. And he did it that way specifically so that our faith would be strengthened and our unbelief rebuked. I gloried in that rebuke, for in it I heard the voice of the Lover of my Soul: "O you of little faith... why did you doubt?"

Hope is what gives us perseverance, as we read in our team devotional this evening in I Thess 1. It is the looking forward of a sure and certain knowledge that God will deliver us, a knowledge based on the surety of his very life. But hope is by nature temporary, and there always comes a moment when the desperate clinging of our faith to the promise of God is interrupted by the warm embrace of Jesus doing what he said he would do. That is what I felt today, and it is a reality that I want for this mission trip. I want my unbelief and sinful myopia to be shattered by the very presence of God, showing himself mighty among us to do what only he can. I want my self to decrease, and Christ to increase. I want others to know what I was sweetly reminded of: that we serve the true and living God, and that he is faithful even when we are not.

Please keep us in your prayers. They are spoken to a God who listens, who cares, and who will surely do all that we ask or need.

Love in Christ,

Jeremy and Lynn