One day I woke up in the middle of the night. My bed was right next to the window. Gazing at the sky with a few stars, my prospectus came into my mind.
I tried my best to do research and rewrite my second version, by leaving for Taiwan for a two-week archival research after failing the first defense, coming back to Princeton and finished a completely new draft within a week, then finalised and submitted it. All this effort didn’t earn me a pass.
However, looking at the night sky, what also flew into my mind was God’s faithfulness. The unshakably steadfast one. I thought of how my Shepherd sustained me when I was so tired amidst the writing process, and how He lifted my heart up to try to stretch a bit more to finish the writing. Because in everything we do, we don’t seek to please men but to delight Him. And I thought of how He overflowed and surrounded my heart with an unexplainable peace.
Failure can be so frustrating and disappointing largely because we think that all the strength, time and effort we invested would turn to vanity if we do not succeed. And the detour would lead to fearful uncertainty and unknown.
Most of us would seek for a place to settle. A place where our root can grow deep. A place where we no longer have to move around in uncertainty and insecurity. A place where we believe we can develop something solid and unremovable.
But I believe the most secure settling is something deeper. Once upon a time, there was a guy called Abram (God renamed him Abraham when he was ninety-nine year old). One day God called Abram to leave his home, and go to the land that he would show him. This was not a two-week trip, instead, a lifelong journey as a sojourner. He moved from place to place, lived in tent instead of houses. When his wife passed away in the land of Canaan, he was living there but hadn’t posses the land yet, and that he had to ask the inhabitants, “I am a sojourner and foreigner among you; give me property among you for a burying place, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.” (Genesis 23:4) Ever since he left home, Abraham lived a life of sojourner, without a place he really belonged to.
However, I really believe that Abraham found his place of belonging in the tent where there were only God and him alone. Because in His presence, there is fullness of joy, and the deepest satisfaction to our soul. This was also the place where his tremendous faith came from. A utter faith to believe in a promise of having as many of offspring as stars of heaven and sand on the seashore, that he never saw it fulfilled in his own lifetime, but God fulfilled it decades and centuries after the death of Abraham.
As long as there is a tent where we can dwell in His presence, we find “home” amidst lodging. In that secret place where there are only God and us, we find where we truly belong to. And the circumstances outside the tent in the desolate wilderness no longer matters, regardless of thunderstorm, windstorm, snowstorm and sandstorm. Because no circumstance can become a storm in His Presence. If we trust in His perfect sovereign.
I saw an interesting scenery at the stunning seashore of Cancun. While the left side of the sky was literally in perfect sky blue with a few clouds flowing relaxingly, there was that gigantic drifting dark cloud on the right side, trying to devour the blue sky. Despite the brewing of storm, the depth of the ocean remained the same.
We can choose to believe or not to believe. But when God says “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2), He means every word, by all means.
No comments:
Post a Comment