For Such a Time as This

     Recently, I resigned from the ministry I was serving in.  I had thoroughly enjoyed my time there and the students I got to lead, and I will miss them.  But I knew that God was calling me elsewhere and asking if I would be willing to take a step of faith--risking to look crazy to my family and friends who didn't and still don't understand.  I answered the call and said yes.  So over the course of a weekend my parents and I packed up all of belongings and I resettled them in Joplin, MO, and this past Sunday was the first in a while when I can truly say I experienced what the church should be, and yet what so many seem to be missing.  

     It had nothing to do with the sermon or the music that was played.  Rather it happened during a time of prayer, a time that most worship services seem to exclude.  It was the kind of prayer that happens spontaneously; prayer that that happens when people gather together and envelope one another with love and acceptance.  My response, tears.  I couldn't stop the tears that flowed down my face, they just kept coming.  

   I had people who loved me and wanted the best for me, people who have been with me every step of the way for the past year as I searched for what God was doing in my life.  They enclosed around me and prayed over me.  And I just cried.  I knew that God was doing something in my life, but never imagined it would be felt in such a painful and joyful menagerie of tears. 

     The sermon that morning was nothing spectacular, but there was one line, a line that will stick with me as I travel through this wandering I find myself in.  The line is this: "Sometimes we sit around and wait on God, but what if he is waiting on us?"  Profound.  God is at work and has been already in my life.  And as I search for what God is doing already in my life and where he is already preparing people for me, I must move; move in His direction and find what he has been waiting for me to do, to find the place, that when I look back on my life, I can say that God has been preparing me "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14).