great is thy faithfulness

pictures of real life lately-- sort of randomly skyping with Darcy, grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, midnight snowy bokeh, and messy beds at two 'o' clock. cause sometimes, that's life.

You cry with your parents. You ask why. You say it isn't right. You don't know what to pray. You struggle with the fact that your world is tumbling about your ears.

And then you hear yourself-- did you just call that your world, AnnaKate? Your world?

There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God. (Jonathon Edwards) 

This is the world of the God who freckled the sky with stars and sweeps the cobalt waves back with His hand. He chose your double-name, the golden-brown hue of your eyes, that scar in the small of your back before He had set the foundations of the earth. He formed you in the womb as your parents shopped sales at Baby GAP and struggled over names. He placed you-- a filthy sinner, a rebel in His sight, a God-hater-- in a family that preached the Gospel to you again and again, and He made your heart ready to receive it. He called you out of the darkness and into His marvelous light. (Colossians 1.13) From the kindness of His heart, he chose to give you loving, amazing parents who could train and equip and encourage you in your new, green faith. He moved you states away, He ordained the very details of this situation, He knows what is to become of you tomorrow, and the next day, and the next month, and the next year. AnnaKate, He has rescued you from utter destruction you completely deserved because it pleased Him to do so. 

And yet you call it your world.

And this reveals to you your completely skewed perspective, the way you've bought into the world's entitlement lie, the selfishness of your heart. You are called to be a living sacrifice, AnnaKate. Because He is now yours, and you are now His, and there is no other place in this world that gives such comfort and security and beauty and love; that so completely turns your gaze away from yourself; that presents such a beautiful challenge. Why is it beautiful? Because you're not alone, AnnaKate. He's promised to instruct you and teach you, to keep His eye upon you, to counsel you in the way He'd have you to go. (Psalm 32.8) 

You were a vile, rebellious hater of the Lord, AnnaKate-- and this is what He has promised you.

So is all this really so bad? Yes, it hurts, and it hurts to see those people you love hurt, and it hurts to know people can be so evil. But "God is not dead, nor does He sleep." He is alive--He is alive in you.

May you have the heart of David Livingstone:

People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called sacrifice which is simply paid back as part of the great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own reward of healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with such a word, with such a view, and such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing whe compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father's throne on high to give Himself for us. (David Livingstone, Livingstone's Private Journal)

Away with the thought of this being your world, of the trials God blesses you with to conform you to His image being sacrifices, of the selfishness that demands explanation. AnnaKate--He is your rock, your comfort, your dwelling place, and it is Him that has made the sacrifice.