Secure in Him

Three weeks since my last blog post have sure passed quickly. The summer is almost over, as evidenced by the shorter days and school starting again. For many years, this week was the week when we would be seeing one or more of our children off to college. That was always a time of transition in our family as we adjusted or re-adjusted the size of our family and finally we were down to just the two of us. Now we have grandchildren heading back to school. Where does the time go?

I am thankful for those years of adjusting to the emptying nest, because these days transition seems to be a constant of my life. (I joke that the only thing constant in our life is change!) Because the lease on our apartment is coming up for renewal in two months, and we have to give notice of what we are going to do, we have been in the midst of some major decisions. And because so many things are out of our hands, we have had some big disappointments, especially just this week. Things that we had thought and hoped were going to happen aren't. And we are left wondering (again), "Now what do we do?"

My daughter gave me a book for my birthday which has been such a blessing to me. It is Secure in the Everlasting Arms by Elisabeth Elliott. I highly recommend it. If you know me at all, you know I am a big fan of Elisabeth and her books and quotes which contain so much wisdom. One of her most quoted sayings is "Just do the next thing", and that has been my theme lately.

One chapter in her book contains the following quote by a man named Jim O'Donnell, which was used by permission and refers to his wife's illness, but it spoke to me:

"We must learn to be faithful people in this new assignment, one we certainly never would have asked for but one which can still bless us and use us to serve our Creator and others." (emphasis mine)

I have been thinking a lot about that - the idea that even though it doesn't seem like God is using us at all at the present, He can still use us in ways that we never would have thought of or planned. Ways that are very different from having a formal ministry of teaching or speaking or mentoring, which I miss so much. And God recently gave me two instances to illustrate this. I hesitate to share these because I don't want the point to be me. I want to show how God can use us to influence others in very unlikely ways, and that we can have a ministry no matter what, as long as we have a servant's heart. Psalm 138:8a tells me, "The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me."

A couple Sundays ago, a woman I barely know at church came up to me and said she had been watching me and had noticed how I dress, and she wanted me to know she appreciated the example I was setting. I was shocked, because I never knew I was being watched. And I was even more surprised when after the morning service, my husband were in a local restaurant having lunch. I was dressed as I always do for church - a nice and modest dress with a matching jacket and jewelry. Our waitress, who was probably in her twenties, came over to our table. She looked at me and said,"Wow, you look so nice! I love the way you dress! I wish women like you could teach women my age how to dress." She went on to describe how it seems like women her age have no idea how to dress nicely or appropriately. My husband remarked after she left that those two incidents tell us that someone is always watching us, whether we are aware of it or not. God can use us in such simple ways as having a testimony in the way we dress.

The second thing that happened was yesterday at the close of my day at work, when my phone rang at the last minute and it was one of the managers. He said he just wanted to compliment me on the nice job I was doing and how well I handled the customers. I about dropped the phone, but it made my day. Again, I had no idea I was being watched. God can use us in the way we speak and treat others.

The point of this is not that I know how to dress or that I do a good job at work. The point is that God can use us in many ways, and sometimes those ways are totally unexpected or totally different than what we are used to. Someone is always watching us or looking to us for our reaction. But we need to be open and willing to do what He has for us.

And that brings me back to the title I gave this post - Secure in Him. Because that is what it always comes back to. It all depends on an attitude of trusting Him. I love Psalm 139, and a verse I read and meditated on this week which goes along with this is verse 5, "Thou has beset me behind and before, and lay thy hand upon me." The phrase "beset me" also means "hem me in." I love the picture of being "hemmed in" by the Lord. He holds the boundaries. He won't let us unravel (it sure feels like everything is unraveling!). He controls both the past and the future. If we really believe that, then we can be open to what He has for us.