Trees were only trunks, lining my peripheral with motionless human beings beside the square tiled sidewalk. But at the rhythmic slapping of wings against broad leaves, I looked up at the silhouettes of startled birds in the bright sky.
The sky. When was the last time I had seen the expanse of soft blue, white, and gray? Far above the wailing streets of traffic and layered buildings was majesty. And it watched me with quiet pleasure, waiting for me to remember.
Where do missed opportunities go? Are they gone forever or does God redeem them by giving us new opportunities?
Here in North Africa, where living intentionally should be as easy as breathing, I still miss opportunities. Why? Well, I’m busy; there is always language to study, classes to teach, emails to write, friends to visit, etc.
But those excuses aren’t good enough. Try telling a little boy that preparing lunch is more important than his soul. Maybe that’s not exactly what I said, but it is most likely what I communicated.
I was in the middle of a bad day when he followed me home from the store. People had been raining expectations down on me and I was exhausted although the day was only half finished. So when he jumped up and followed me, I rolled my eyes.
He only wanted one coin, he said. But to me, he was just one more beggar with just one more fabulous fable to accompany the outstretched palm. I tried to be pleasant, but my smile faded with his persistence. “Enough!” I said as he fell in step with me. “Be quiet!” I said. He didn’t. He followed me to my doorstep and only stopped when I closed the door behind me.
I had just started putting groceries away when my conscience awakened. What if I was the only person in that boy’s life who could have shared truth with him?
It took an hour or so before I was ready to face him again and apologize for my heartlessness. But when I went outside, he wasn’t there. Nor was he in front of the store. He had vanished.
So had my opportunity.
But my question is this: Has God redeemed my mistake by giving me another opportunity? Could it be having tea with that lonely widow? Or maybe taking time for a girl whose insecurity manifests itself in bullying?
God is a God of redemption. Because He has redeemed me, I know He is capable of redeeming my missed opportunities.
This post was first published on https://lucindajmiller.com
I was yawning between pages of War and Peace. The train’s rumble of metal on metal was soothing after three hours.
As we had moved from city to city, passengers had changed so often that they became a blur of faceless humanity. Across the compartment, someone took a seat facing me, another faceless being. I yawned again.
But then I smelled him. Cigarette smoke. I tried not to wrinkle my nose as I looked at him. Our eyes locked. He blinked, and I looked away.
Him.
What?!
When I had started the trip, I had spent time in prayer. God, I want to listen to Your voice today. Several times, women had sat down next to me, but most had avoided eye contact. All I had given or received was a smile or maybe a greeting. But now it was a man. I didn’t talk to men unless I had a reason.
Remember the woman at the well? Who talked to her? Was it a man or a woman?
But I can’t talk to him. And my Arabic is horrid. Besides, I will only get myself into trouble… Fine. Okay, but You have to make Your timing really clear.
More than an hour later, he stood up–was he leaving? No, he took the empty seat next to me. I continued to skim through a dry chapter of War and Peace.
Now? But what if I heard You wrong?
Then he stood again. “Can you save my seat for me?” he asked in perfect English.
Wait, he speaks English?
It was only a few minutes before he drifted back to his reserved seat, bringing along a cloud of cigarette smoke. This time I did wrinkle my nose. “You’re killing yourself, you know?”
He turned to me. “Do you believe in destiny?” His voice was low and gentle.
A subconscious understanding of where the conversation was headed triggered words that I didn’t hear until they had sprung from my lips: “Are you a fatalist?”
From there, our conversation careened down a different path than he had intended. But it was exactly the path that God had intended.
I doubt I will ever see him again. But it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that I am learning to listen to God’s voice.
I find that when I am forced to be inactive for a length of time, I begin to wonder things I normally don’t take time to think about.
Such as:
Is it only those with rushed, complicated lives that can appreciate the simple? Can those who are simple truly appreciate their simplicity when they’ve never experienced anything different? So then, can simplicity only be fully appreciated by those who don’t have it? And can the complicated life ever go back to being simple or does it always carry its baggage of experience with it? Can the process of losing simplicity ever be reversed? In short, can one both know and appreciate their own simplicity?
Do you ever get tired of living by the expectations of the culture around you? I do. Expectations can be healthy, a type of accountability. In a way, expectations are what people give you when they can’t or chose not to give you rules.
Living in a different culture gives me two sets of cultural expectations to abide by. Suddenly, besides the way that I have been raised to behave, I am given a new set of standards from a very different culture. Sometimes I am stranded when the cultures clash: Is it better to be evasive and deceptive or offend someone by being truthful? Either way, someone is unhappy.
In short, I forget to focus on God’s expectations, which might mean disappointing both cultures.
But are God’s expectations attainable? He was the one who placed me in this cultural conflict in the first place, so wouldn’t His expectations be the hardest to meet of all? And He does expect a lot:
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”
2 Cor. 3:18
His expectation is that we become more like the Son, more challenging than any cultural demand!
But He also remembers something that cultures forget: we are dust. Living to please cultural expectations would drain every drop of our resources, and like Solomon’s leech (Prov. 30:15), the culture(s) would still cry for more.
But God sees our limitations and coordinates them with His great expectation:
“As a father shows compassion to his children,
Ps. 103:13-14
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”
He doesn’t forget our frailty; he knows what it is like to be a human. His expectation for us doesn’t change, but as we learn, His grace abounds.
A few weeks ago, a friend read us the story of the woman and the copper coins (Mark. 12:41-44). As we sat around the room listening to the story, we saw the Teacher and His disciples watching the procession of people drop their dutiful percentages into the offering box.
And in the middle of the clanking coins of the proud and wealthy, we saw a poor widow approach the box and drop in her two small copper coins.
I had always pictured the widow creeping up and hiding her flushed face as she dropped in her offering. But if she was trying to hide, she would have done a better job than to let the disciples see the value and count the number of coins that had dropped in.
Maybe she wasn’t embarrassed at all. Despite the wealth and the substantial giving of the others, she was unashamed to bring her offering to God. And why should she be ashamed? She gave God 100%; she gave “all that she had to live on” (Mark 12:44).
I want to offer my life like she offered her two copper coins.
Not long ago, someone told me, “Every story is beautiful.” “Of course!” I probably responded. All stories were beautiful, but some stories were fascinating: dreams and visions, persecution, bold statements of faith, etc. Those were the stories that captivated me. They still do.
But that someone was right by putting all stories on the same level. Because, as he went on to say, “God loves you just as much as He loves anyone else.” Right. Of course, but–
But it’s true. My redemption story is just as miraculous and beautiful even though I haven’t “stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword” (Heb. 11:33-34). In fact, many of the people who are in the Hebrews “Hall of Faith” lived lives of simple obedience rather than lives of excitement.
Those exciting stories are still fascinating. However, my challenge this week is to thank God for the redemption stories of the “normal” people around me.
Whether exciting or not, our stories are miraculous.
This morning I woke up early but chose not to get out of bed. The fan’s consistent hum soothed me as my mind wandered over the past week… and then the coming week.
As I lay there, suddenly I was terrified by the sensation that life was too much for me. I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t overcome the obstacles in my course.
The panicky taste lingered as all of my challenges and problems heaped up in front of me and dared me to climb. I only wanted to run away. Until I remembered that greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world (1 Jn. 4:4).
WhatamIdoinghere
And whatwasIthinking
To expose myself to rejection
And the stinging unknown.
WhatamIdoinghere
And whatwasIthinking
To make myself vulnerable
To a broken world,
Tasting its pain and distress
Hearing the cry of the oppressed.
WhatamIdoinghere
And whatwasIthinking
To let my soul experience
The piercing emotion that comes
From living a full life,
Allowing my will to battle strife,
Petitioning for souls at heaven’s door,
And understanding love more than before
WhatamIdoinghere?
There is someone I regularly pass judgment upon. I try not to. But he has a way of deflating my perceived piety because whenever I am around him, I feel myself judging him. He just doesn’t fit into my spiritual box.
Nearly every time I see him, God teaches me the same lesson: “Stop judging, my child.” And I am convicted once again.
Spirituality isn’t confined to what I think it should look like. And when I’m not so busy being full of myself and how I am doing spirituality perfectly, then I see how God displays His attributes differently in different people. So how can I put His personality in a box?
And I think of the people in the Bible who more focused on God than on themselves. They had to do some pretty radical things: leading an entire people group out of slavery, taking messages of judgment to God’s people, marrying a prostitute, living a wild desert life, and giving up normality to have a child out of wedlock…a child conceived by the Holy Spirit.
So how can I say that I know what a relationship with God looks like for every person? He doesn’t give us all of the same callings or the same gifts. And I am thankful that not everyone is as closed-minded as I am about following God radically.
My Thoughts From Afar | 