Thoughts

Honduras. Day 57.

{Just some thoughts}

Today I just stayed home. I used one of my "Get Out of Jail Free" intern cards and decided that it was a day for rest.

What I got, however, was something that I needed much, much more.

The other night, I was chatting with Allison on Facebook and she was telling me about a Nooma video that she watched at her church on Wednesday night and how she thought it was one that I needed to watch. She told me that it's one to watch when I'm by myself and without any distractions, though. So this afternoon I pulled it up on YouTube and sat outside of Villa Gracia and watched "Noise" by Rob Bell.

It was a video about the noise of the world and the silence that we need to finally be able to listen to God again. It hit home for me. A couple of hours later, I went down to the Rock by myself and sat there

in silence

and listened. But I have to tell you: at first, I heard absolutely nothing. I listened, and I listened, and I listened, and God said

nothing.

So I started going off on God. I definitely pulled a Job on Him and asked Him where He's been in my life lately, why I can't feel Him, why I can't hear Him, and why He's let people and circumstances around me crush me like they have. And I grumbled, and complained, and just let Him have it.

And then I heard back.

I heard Him ask me if I understood what the word "good" even really meant. I heard Him ask me if I was a god who can see how things would fit together and play out for what is truly "better." I heard Him ask me if I was so focused on myself and worried about myself that I was failing to see that what might hurt me at the time is for the "good" of the bigger picture.

And I started to apologize for questioning Him. But He told me that He had already forgiven me. He forgave me the day He died on the cross for me. He reminded me that His love reaches to the Heavens, and that He would forget that I had walked away from Him, that I had left Him, that I had stopped holding on to Him

because He was ALWAYS still holding on to me.

So I'm letting go. I'm forgetting the past. Because I'm starting to understand that just because His plans don't seem "good" to me at the time, He is this massive, huge, GREAT God who is working things together to truly be

for the better.