Caught in the Current

Time can seem to be the enemy these days.

Laura shares joy with a small group

We are already halfway through April, the second-to-last month of our year of ministry, and it often feels like time has lost its regular flow. Retreats, travel days, supplies runs, team days, all our one night stays in host homes--everything seems to either fly by, or else crawl past. This is the point where our team may become weary, where it may seem like we have nothing left to do but let life sweep us helplessly along... but there is so much more hope in store than that!

Envision a river that flows through an expansive forest glade. The river current does not have the same character all throughout the woods, however. At some points, it flows gently, meekly slipping over little pebbles and easily slipping onward. Sometimes it will become a cascade, falling and tumbling over rocks, bubbles of confusion forming before sweeping on. Occasionally a torrent will form, where all the water rips into a funnel of white foam rapids, and it seems like nothing that goes in will come out on the other side exactly as whole as it was before.

Corbin finds a quiet moment before the tabernacle

I once heard time described as this same kind of river. When the river is flowing gently, that is when we have time to breathe, to take in God's beauty and providence. This is a time of great spiritual richness and consolation, when we are able to bask in God's goodness.

Then the river of time begins to cascade, as complications in our personal or spiritual life arise, and problems seem to become more and more insurmountable. We are called to take greater and greater risks, like taller and taller waterfalls, which can leave us feeling almost breathless as we are hurriedly swept along.

Finally, the torrent: the really difficult points in our life. This is when we enter into a time of great pain or spiritual desolation, and all the circumstances of our life seem to sweep us along in a heartless current. Often the fear is that we will lose something during this time, that the pull of the water is so violent that there is no way we could make it through as whole as we were when we started out.

Our team prepares for team prayer: the strength of our ministry

Over the past month, I feel that our team has experienced all these currents on the river. For a few weeks in March, we were left reeling from an accident that our team got in that left our trailer totalled, many of our supplies damaged, and our team shaken (though nobody was injured at all--praise God and His goodness!). Personally, experiencing that torrent let me realize that now is all the time I have been given. I recently wrote in my journal: I am beginning to grow weary, but I will not pray that You will give me rest, Lord, but that You will give me the strength for louder battle cries and stronger fights. Now, of all the time I have been given, is God's gift to me, and no matter where I happen to be in the current, I must trust that God is riding this river along with me.

So I suppose that time is not the enemy at all, but a gift, a means by which God is letting me be swept closer to Him, swept up in His love.

Peace,

Encounter 2