With Eyes to See

today my car broke down on the way home from statesboro. i was stopping in macon to get coffee with my friend lindsay, and as i got off the exit, my car just quit working. it was still running but wouldn’t do anything. i couldn’t turn the wheel, press the brake, or move forward. i turned it off to restart it real quick, and it wouldn’t crank back up. i spent 4 hours in macon trying to figure out what was wrong with it. i ended up getting it towed to lindsay’s parent’s house and riding back to statesboro with brooke. not my favorite solution. when i got back to statesboro, my mom texted me and said not to worry, to remember my bible study talk. so i’m posting it here, because maybe i’m not the only one who needs to hear it today. keep in mind that it was intended for our thursday night bible study and was leading into worship that night.

  Matthew 6:25-34 NIV 1984

    ²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

   ²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

So I’m talking tonight instead of Danny, and when I first started thinking about speaking at Bible study one night this semester, Danny gave me the choice of anything in the Sermon on the Mount to talk about. I thought about it for a while, but I ended up choosing this passage because, well, I worry about everything.

You might think you understand what I mean when I say that I’m a worrier, but I promise you, the level of worry I experience about completely meaningless things is out of control. If you’ve been around CCF for a while or just around Robert Conner making fun of me, you’ve probably heard this story before, but a few years ago, when I was a Boulder, we were getting ready for the Spring Retreat. Every year on the retreat we play Olympic Games that the Boulders are in charge of, and one of them is a box car race where teams build a car or sled out of cardboard, duct tape, and rope. The night before the retreat we went to Walmart to get supplies, and we bought a 50-foot rope that we intended to cut into smaller pieces so each team could have one. Well, on the way up to Atlanta for the retreat, I realized that I hadn’t packed any scissors to cut the rope with. So I called someone else on the team and asked if they brought scissors. No. “Well,” I said, “what are we going to cut the rope with?” “I don’t know, I’m sure someone has some scissors.” But that didn’t convince me, because if I didn’t think to pack scissors, then why would anyone else remember? So I started calling all the other Boulders, and repeating over and over again “but how are we going to cut the rope?” I just kept getting the same answer, which was basically, “Don’t worry, I’m sure someone has some scissors, check with the interns, maybe the camp has some, we’ll figure it out when we get there.” I am just not the kind of person who can figure things out when I get there! So I worried the whole way up there and all of Friday night until finally somebody found me some scissors Saturday morning and I made sure to cut that rope as early as I possibly could. It was so dumb. But that’s how I get about a lot of things in my life.

Everything worries me. Everything stresses me out. Every small thing becomes a huge deal when I don’t know what the outcome is going to be. And as a Christian, I know that I’m not supposed to worry. I’ve heard it all a million times. This passage from the Sermon on the Mount is not a new thing for me. I can recite the whole thing in the King James version, and I bet a lot of you could do the same. We know that the Bible says not to worry about our lives, but how often do we really listen to that? For me, I know that I sometimes have it in my head that not worrying is completely unrealistic for me. I think that worrying is in my nature. I have to do it. I try to make excuses to God for it. Or I try to say that: I’m not worrying—I’m just trying to plan. I just need to think through every scenario so I will be ready. Or I tell God  that I trust what He’s doing but that I’m still going to try to work things out on my own—if He fixes it, great, but I’m going to try my own way too. I say these things all the time and act like I have it all under control, but worrying is a huge problem for me, and I bet it is for a lot of you too. It’s a problem because it indicates a lack of trust.

It’s funny because there are so many areas of my life where the only thing I can do is trust God. A big one for me is money. Working for CCF is my full-time job, and this may come as a giant shock, but I don’t get paid very much money to do it. I get a small pay check each month from Danny, and then I have the opportunity for people I know to send me money in addition to that. I have a couple of people who are committed to doing that every month, and I am so thankful for that. But things come up, and even with extra support money a lot of time I’m just scraping by before that next paycheck. And I know that I’m not going to starve to death, but I start getting a little bit nervous about what I’m going to do for that last week. I start thinking a little too much about it, and it starts to consume me. I start thinking more about how to save money than I think about God. It starts controlling my life, and I get upset at God and try to justify it by telling Him that He shouldn’t have put me in this position if He wasn’t going to provide for me.

But the thing is, God always provides for me. All last year, He provided for me and allowed my food or money or resources to somehow last until the next month. And you would think that I could have just learned my lesson from that. A few months ago, I was in a position where I needed God to provide for me in a big way. I had spent my paycheck, I needed money, and it wasn’t close to the next payday. I had given money to missions, I had done everything I was supposed to do, I wasn’t wasting my money on things I didn’t need, and yet—I had no idea how I was going to last the rest of the month. I started worrying as I watched my food and money and gas supply get low. I didn’t know what I was going to do for the rest of the month. Some expenses came up that I didn’t know how I would pay for. I started worrying and obsessing over what was going to happen. I let this thinking consume me, and I refused to listen to anyone who was trying to tell me that it would be okay. I knew that it would be okay, but I was concerned with how. I needed an answer. It came to a point one day where I was the only one at the CCF house sitting in the living room by myself. I just started crying and praying and really just yelling at God and telling Him that I didn’t understand what He was doing. In the middle of that, someone walked in the front door holding a stack of mail and handed me a letter. There was a check inside for me, for no more and no less than what I needed to make it through the month. I immediately felt relieved and thankful, but more than anything, I felt ashamed. I realized at that moment how little I trusted God even when He had always been faithful in the past. I started thinking about how much of my life I was wasting by worrying about these things. Jesus tells us here in these verses that worrying won’t add a single hour to our lives, basically telling us that worrying is a waste of time. When I think about how upset I was, how frustrated and basically miserable I let myself get, I realize that this consuming worry does me much more harm than good. And God provides for me whether I waste my time worrying or not, so why make myself miserable? I know that God is going to give me what I need when I need it, so there’s no reason to worry. It would be great if this meant that I would get a check dropped on my doorstep every time I needed one, but it doesn’t always work that way. Not worrying doesn’t come from knowing what God is going to do; it comes from knowing that God is going to do something.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know for a fact that I am going to get a check in the mail on the exact day that I need it every time the money runs out. I don’t know for sure that my car is never going to break down. I can’t be certain that my family members are never going to get sick, and I don’t know that I’m going to even have a job after this year. So many things in my life are uncertain, but I have this idea in my head of what they are supposed to look like, and it’s hard for me to trust God if it seems like things are going differently than I expected. But I am only looking at it from my own perspective. I can only see one piece of the puzzle, when God’s plan is infinite. Most of the time, it’s not that I don’t believe that God is going to take care of me—but I am scared that God isn’t going to do what I want Him to do. We all do this. We know that God is our provider, but we want Him to do things our way. The reason is because as humans, we think we need to be in control. But we need to understand that God will keep providing for us in the ways that we need Him to, even if it’s not in the way that we want Him to.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is in the book of Ruth in the Old Testament. For those of you who don’t know the story, I’m going to try to tell it as simply as possible so it doesn’t get confusing. There is a Jewish woman named Naomi who moves to a country called Moab with her husband and her two sons. Her husband dies, and then the sons marry 2 Moabite women named Orpah and Ruth, and then both of the sons die. So Naomi is left in this foreign country with her 2 daughters-in-law and there’s not a man in the family to take care of them and no children to carry on the family line. Naomi decides to go back home to Bethlehem where she’s from, and she tells Orpah and Ruth to go back to their families where maybe they will be taken care of. Orpah leaves to go back home, which was probably considered a smart decision, but Ruth says that she is going back to Bethlehem with Naomi. She tells Naomi that she will go wherever Naomi goes and that she will follow Naomi’s God. This is a big deal because they’re two women out on their own, and there’s not much that they can do for themselves. If they’re going to survive, someone will probably have to take pity on them. Ruth wants to go, not because it’s the better or safer option, but because she cares about Naomi. She wants to make sure that Naomi doesn’t have to do this alone. So they get to Bethlehem, and Ruth ends up gathering wheat in the field of a man named Boaz, who happens to be a close relative of her dead husband. Because he is a relative, he has the right to marry Ruth and take care of her and Naomi if he wants to. But Ruth has to ask him to do this, and there are all these steps she has to take to make this happen. She goes through this whole process of things she has to do before going to him and asking him to “redeem” her and her mother-in-law. Boaz agrees, and they get married and have a son named Obed. Now, obviously if you know this story, you’re aware that there’s a lot more going on here, but I’m just trying to focus on the basics, because I see a few important things here. The first is that it took a lot of faith for Ruth to do all of this. She was probably guaranteed security if she went back to her family and lived with them, but she insists on following Naomi and following Naomi’s God. I can imagine that even in her insistence, there is still some worry and anxiety there. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but she does what she knows is right anyway. Another thing I think we can take from this is that Ruth’s life ends up being different than what she expected. She probably would have preferred to settle in Moab with her first husband and have a family there, but her plans are turned upside-down. I’m sure that she was worried about what she was going to do, but God provided for her. And the thing is, Ruth probably recognized that, but she could never have imagined what God was really doing and what effect her story would have on anyone else. But if we look in Matthew 1 at the genealogy of Jesus, we are able to see how Ruth’s story is important even to us today. In verse 5, we see that a Boaz was the father of Obed, Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of King David. Then, generations later, Jesus is born. Ruth’s story is so much bigger than what it seems and what she could imagine. Ruth’s story was part of God’s plan to redeem the world and she had no idea. While Ruth was thinking about her family and her needs, God was thinking about bringing Jesus—and He was thinking about me and you.  

When we worry about things not going along with our plan, it’s because we can’t see the whole picture. We have no idea what God is doing with our lives and what effect that might have on the rest of the world. But we have to trust that He knows what He’s doing, even when we don’t.

Another thing I like about Ruth is that she had to take some steps to get where God wanted her to be, and we have to do the same thing. But I feel like we don’t really understand that sometimes when we look at this passage about worry.

I think a lot of times we read about the birds not sowing or reaping and the lilies not spinning thread and think that Jesus is telling us not to do those specific things or do nothing at all. But that’s not what He’s saying. If the farmers listening to Jesus preach this sermon had gone home and stopped growing food they probably would have starved. Sowing and reaping was something necessary for them to do. The birds don’t do that because it’s not what birds are supposed to do.

Emmet Fox says in his book on The Sermon on the Mount:

“Of course [Jesus] did not mean that you as a human being are to copy the lives or the methods of the birds or flowers literally, for you are infinitely higher in the scale of creation than they are. The lesson is that you are to adapt yourself as completely to your element as they do to theirs. Your true element is the Presence of God.”

What he’s saying here is that the flowers and the birds are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, and God takes care of them. We are not supposed to do what they do. We are supposed to do what it is that God intends for us to do.

We miss that sometimes when we are looking at this passage. In verse 33, Jesus says: “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you…” We skip over this a lot when we talk about not worrying. It’s easy to remind ourselves not to worry, whether we live by that or not, but this line adds a lot more to it. Basically, God will provide for you if you seek Him first. We can’t just sit there and wait for God to take care of everything around us. We have to seek God first, to follow Him, to do whatever it is He asks us to do. And then God will provide for us. So if we are following God, we have no need to worry.

So, the question is, how do we follow God? How do we seek His kingdom first? How do we become like the birds and rely completely on God and do whatever he created us to do? If our true element is in the Presence of God, then we are supposed to be praying and worshipping and learning and following God wherever and whenever He asks us to go. I think that to do that, we have to being willing to let go of control. We have to let go of needing to know what’s going to happen. We have to let go of thinking that we know what we’re doing better than God does. When we look at the lilies of the field, we should see that: They are not in control. They aren’t thinking about tomorrow. They aren’t wondering what’s going to happen to them. But they are right there doing exactly what God has placed them there to do. The point Jesus is trying to make here is that God takes care of them because He believes that they are worth it. How much more will God take care of us when He believed that we were worth dying for?

Maybe the idea of not being in control of your life is terrifying to you. It’s terrifying for me. It is so hard for me to let go and trust that God is going to provide the money and gas and food that I need every day. I need to know that those things are going to be there, just like I need to know that there will always be scissors in case we need to cut up some rope. But I have to learn that if I don’t have enough gas in my car to get where I want to go, God will provide a way for me to get there, and if He doesn’t, it’s because I’m already in the place that I’m supposed to be.

This idea is revolutionary. It might be even more revolutionary today than it was when Jesus originally said it. We are living in a world that tells us to take control of our lives. But God is asking us to give that control over to Him. He wants us to seek Him first, to follow the steps that He has laid out for us, and to trust Him in everything we do.

Maybe you’ve never done that before. Maybe you have no idea what it’s like to be out of control. But God wants you to be calm in His presence and trust Him. And before you can trust, you have to let go.

I’ve been learning a lot this week about letting go of control and being in the presence of God. Brooke has been telling me all week that I need to let God work in my life and that I just need to wake up in the morning and tell Him that my day belongs to Him. This has always been hard for me, because I spend so much time worrying about tomorrow, that I lose sight of the things happening around me today. And today, right now, God is in this room. We are in His presence. We come here every week to worship Him, but how often is there something else on our minds? How often do our worries for the future cloud our vision of what God is doing right here and right now? I mean, what would it look like if we worshipped God fully, letting go of the things holding us back from Him, and trusting in His infinite plan?

So what is it? What are you still holding on to? What are you trying to keep control of? Just let it go. As we pray, tell God that you want to trust Him. And as we sing, just worship Him with everything you have.

a few days ago i was in my room, putting my make-up on i think, and briana walked in.

out of nowhere she says “how long was marjorie an intern?”

“three years,” i answer, still looking in the mirror.

“that’s what i thought. is that normal?”

“not really. i don’t know of anyone else that’s interned here for more than two. why?”

she shrugs her shoulders. “no reason.”

i look at her out of the corner of my eye and watch her expression as i realize what she is actually asking. “are you wondering if i’m going to be here next year?” i ask.

“well, kind of.”

i don’t really know what i’m supposed to say in that situation. i’m halfway through my second year of interning at ccf, and i don’t know what happens next. i don’t know where i’ll be. but i never thought that anyone besides me would be concerned about that. i keep thinking back to my time as a freshman and sophomore when the people i loved were always saying goodbye. since then, i’ve become used to it. people come and go in my life, and i know now that saying goodbye is not forever. it used to seem like it, though, and sometimes i even felt abandoned. it breaks my heart that i could make anyone else feel that way. in the end though, i think i learned a lot from watching people move in and out of my life, always sticking around in the shadows to be there whenever i needed, just a phone call, email, or text message away…

i can only hope that when i do leave, i can do it knowing that i lived every day out to the fullest, that i didn’t waste any time that could be invested in students, that i loved them the way that jesus loves me. sometimes my job is hard, but sometimes a little perspective makes me so glad that it’s not over yet.

this is briana. and this is why my job is worth it.

here’s my list. :)

not in any order, just in the order that i thought of them.

1. jesus
2. mom
3. emily
4. ccf
5. my job
6. brooke
7. grayson
8. alex teate
9. my stones group
10. my dirt from last year
11. our awesome praise band
12. alex espino
13. blake
14. jessi
15. kathleen
16. kim
17. briana
18. our new projector
19. my bed
20. my car
21. my laptop
22. my dad
23. aunt susan
24. grandad
25. uncle kerry
26. all the leftovers in the fridge
27. danny
28. cool weather
29. colorful leaves
30. my mom’s boyfriend, billie
31. fallon, kyleigh, seth, lexi, molly, and meagan
32. christmas music
33. peppermint mochas
34. red nail polish
35. my mom’s new house
36. marjorie and joel
37. mikell and lindsay
38. robert
39. shannon
40. mary margaret
41. lily and violet
42. diet arizona green tea
43. my guitar
44. my ukulele
45. clown bunny
46. sweatshirts
47. skinny jeans
48. white v-necks
49. ice cream
50. macaroni and cheese

i love my job. so much. i love every student at ccf more than i could ever explain. they are all beautiful reflections of jesus. they teach me so much more than they could ever learn from me.

but sometimes it’s hard. it’s hard to be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. it’s hard to be sick and to not be able to take a day off. it’s hard to stay up past 2 and get up before 8 every day of the week. it’s hard to be responsible for the well-being of 50 semi-adults who are reckless and think they know everything. it’s hard to not be able to eat, sleep, or be alone when i want or need to. most of the time, i’m tired and frustrated and have no idea if i am making any kind of difference in the world.

today, i am sick. i have so many symptoms that no one medicine will make me feel better. i’m going to have to tough it out. and it’s hard, right now, today, to have this job. i think i would just rather sleep for the rest of the week.

but tonight we celebrated freshgiving, our thanksgiving celebration where everyone brings food for a giant pot luck dinner. back in the day when i was a freshman, we used to make lists of 50 things we were thankful for. i don’t know why we haven’t done that in the past few years, and i don’t know why i didn’t think to suggest it for this year, but i’m about to do it on my own. because sometimes this job is hard, but i am thankful, and i need to remember that on days like this.

it’s been a strange few weeks. i feel like god is trying to teach me so many things now that i’m finally willing to learn. i thought i knew what i was doing, being a minister and all, but a few weeks ago working on a bible study talk about giving over control to god, i started to realize how little i had been willing to go wherever god pointed me. i had always been ready to do anything big that i could understand, but i never allowed myself to listen to god in the small moments where his call made no sense to me or didn’t seem like it would make a difference. the past few weeks have been so different. i’m actually allowing myself to hear god calling me, even when the things he calls me to do don’t make sense. with this in mind, i was excited for our fall retreat last weekend. it’s my favorite one we go on, and the speakers and worship there always seem to be the best of the whole year. i could tell from the talks friday night and saturday morning that the speakers were leading up to something big saturday night, something i was ready to hear, something from god that i was so ready to listen to. but something came up. a student needed me. as i was leaving the chapel to talk to him, i could hear god saying “do you love me enough to miss out? do you love me enough to do this instead?” we missed the entire talk and worship set, and i feel like i made no difference whatsoever in the life of this student. things like that are hard. i know where god wanted me that night, but i don’t know if i’ll ever understand why. i don’t know if anything i said was beneficial in any way. this is the hard part about my job, where i have to give up what i want or need to put someone else’s needs first. it makes it even harder when i can’t see how my sacrifice makes any difference. but god called, so i answered, and that’s all i can do.

god has also been calling me lately to move completely out of my comfort zone. it’s funny because doing big things like moving to england for globalscope or interning haven’t been super hard for me. they’re scary, but not uncomfortable. being uncomfortable is almost unbearable for me. embarrassment is probably the worst possible thing that could ever happen in my mind. i don’t know why, but it’s one of the biggest things i struggle with and never talk about. part of this is that i never initiate relationships and friendships. i let others come to me. when i’m certain that i’m wanted, needed, or appreciated, then i am able to allow myself to do something as simple as get coffee with them. this is easier to deal with as an intern investing in students because if for some reason i experience rejection or embarrassment or feel unwanted in a relationship, i can always hide behind the idea that i put myself out there because it was my job to do so. it hides the emotional pain from everyone else, even if i still experience it. and hiding it is really all that i need.

but the calls i’ve been receiving from god lately sound a lot like “go invest in this person you don’t know,” “tell them your story,” “ask them to get coffee,” “put yourself out there.” this is absolutely terrifying. i can’t even tell parts of my story to the people i am closest to, so how can i tell a stranger? how can i go outside of this ministry and my job to invest in people who have no reason to trust me? how could i risk looking like a creep in trying to form deep relationships with people i don’t know? but god’s call has been clear. the hardest part about it though, is that god’s call to go and do it does not save me from hurt or embarrassment. i’m trying to work through what he is really asking me to do here. i thought at first that god was asking me to take a risk, put myself out there, go a little further, and then he would bless me with beautiful conversations and show me how much of a difference i could make in the lives of others if i was only willing to do so. but that’s not what has happened. my life is getting increasingly awkward. there have been no beautiful conversations and nothing really to report back on at all. at first i was really confused and thinking that i must have misunderstood god, but i’m beginning to realize that i don’t have him as figured out as i thought i did. i’m starting to understand that maybe the real task was putting myself out there. maybe god just wanted to show me how. maybe he just wants me to see that i will not die of embarrassment. that’s not to say that these relationships and people that god has called me to won’t turn out to be something beautiful in the future. i just mean that for right now, maybe there’s a lesson just for me.

and maybe, instead of hurting, i could choose to not take it personal and let it go. maybe today i am learning grace instead.

it appears that i actually have things to post about. so many, in fact, that i couldn’t do it all in one post. unfortunately i’m leaving in two hours to go to the beach for a week where i will have no internet. in a minute i’m going to have to start doing things to get ready for that, like packing and brushing my teeth. maybe i’ll still want to post things when i come back. see you in a week.

love,

aubri

(Source: shesafighterr)