A couple of years ago I noticed that God was training me and
teaching me to maintain my focus on Him. I experienced more peace by switching my focus from the worry, concern, or
circumstances of my situation and onto God.
There is a bit of a paradigm shift that has been taking
place in my thinking. Instead of seeing God through or in my circumstances, I am seeing my circumstances through or in God.
This lesson is ongoing and being honed more and more, and it
is beautiful. The more the focus is on God, the more I feel peace, joy, love, patience…you
know, the fruits of the spirit. Its wonderful that this is becoming more of a
reality for me, not just something that the Bible says will happen.
In order to help keep the focus on God I made this, and it
now hangs in my room across from where I have my quiet times.
I will note, my general lack of artistic inspiration made
this very simple project take over 3 months.
Most of the people with whom I spend a majority of my time left Musoma a couple weeks ago, either for furloughs or going home for the holidays. I knew that I would be spending a lot of time alone around the Christmas holiday and I was oddly fine with it. In the past I think that would have sent me into a pit of seemingly justifiable self-pity. You might have even felt pity for me, who knows? But, that didn't happen.
I was at peace completely. There were a few offers to come over on Christmas day since I was going to be alone, but there was no follow-up so I was fine with letting those potentials go.
What I expected from Christmas: A few skype chats, long quiet hours at home to listen to sermons, maybe seeing some of the other ex-pat families.
What I got:
A 20-hour day, starting with a skype call at 3:30am.
A 4-hour church service.
The best gift ever from God (you know, other than Jesus).
People going out of their way to come and pick me up so that I could spend time with them.
I didn't even ask God for anything for Christmas, I know that He cares for me and provides for all my needs, so it didn't even occur to me to ask Him to be with me or do anything specific on that day to meet my needs. Because He is a good and loving God, without me even asking, He ministered to me and cared for me all throughout the day and even gave me a gift that might be one of the best gifts that I've ever received.
"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." Matthew 6:33
Even as Christians I think we spend a lot of time caring for "all these things", making sure our needs are met, seeking the fruits of the spirit, seeking good and godly things, but not seeking first wholly and only God's kingdom and righteousness. He has promised that "all these things" will be given to us when we seek Him first. How much do we really trust that?
I'm learning to seek Him wholly first and I am seeing a marked increase in "all these things" in my life. The less I am focused and caring about "all these things" the more I have of them. I didn't care about ensuring that I would be with people all day during Christmas, I was excited about quiet times with God and ended up having the most people-full and packed Christmas of my life.
Here is the kicker, if I had been looking out for myself and had ensured that I had somewhere to spend Christmas day, I would have missed out on the great present that God had prepared for me and had set into motion 4 weeks ago.
What was that gift? I'll write about it in another blog post, this one is for singing God's praises. But, as a teaser, it started with a 19 or 20 year-old boy that I had never seen before showing up at my gate saying (in Swahili); "I've come to fetch you." My response; "???"
