The song "To find my way to you" which this title quotes might not be the story of my life, though I am across lines from the people I love, but it still moves me.
Stars speak to me even more. So when my dear friend Lisa Fish invited me to join her and some other missionary ladies to go star gazing on her birthday, I gladly accepted. That night I was still struggling in my heart over a pretty big decision that had to be made. Perhaps somewhere inside of me I had hoped that God would speak to me through his creation again. The next line in the song above is "...but they all fall down without a sound from the sky..." When we arrived at the hotel and made our way to the gardens, we found a nice dry spot on a bridge to lay out. Lisa said a quick prayer that included asking God for a shooting star. It seems like a lot of times we ask God for things, not quite expecting them to come true, but hoping all the while. In my head, this was one of those. At first we saw lots of twinklings above us, spotting the magnificently easy to find Orion, then someone pointed out the Southern Cross on the horizon. Since we live on the equator, we have a unique view of parts of both of what the 2 hemispheres view on a nightly basis. Soon we saw a small dash of light flash before our eyes, though there was a debate on what it actually was. Could it have been a bat? There were plenty of them flocking around our heads. We went on with our delightful conversation and before long it was quite clear what was going across the sky. A true shooting star! It started in the top right corner of my view and slowly shot down to the bottom left corner of the sky. It was beautiful as everyone started cheering and Praising God for what he gave us. I can still picture it so well in my memory. I'm a thinker...at least sometimes. That moment I was at least. We were talking about what a shooting star is: a star that has burnt out, thousands of light years ago. Thousands of light years. That's not any easy thing to grasp by any sense of the word. God has control over that whole realm. That star burnt out thousands of years ago. Imagine! God knew thousands of years ago that the 9 of us would be sitting on that bridge looking up at His marvelous creation asking Him to show us a shooting star. God knew! He knew that this childish request would be dawning his ears THOUSANDS of YEARS ago! He cares that much about us. We know that God knows all. But we can't know how little time affects God. I'm glad to accept that God knows, and I don't need to. Even when it's hard to not know what your future holds. Since then, God has revealed himself to me again in a unique way. I was in a car going from Mombasa to Nairobi, Kenya. If you know Kenya at all, you'll know that Mombasa is a costal city on the Indian Ocean about an 8 hour drive from Nairobi. This long road, which is quite flat now, goes through a HUGE game park. On the way there we had seen some small antelopes, and I thought it might be nice if I could see more on the way back. I prayed that God would let me see either a giraffe or an elephant. Quite soon after uttering those prayers in my head I thought, 'How could I ask God for more? He has already shown me so much beauty. There are people all around me that haven't moved 30 miles from the place they were born and here I am asking for more than what he has given me? God, you don't need to show me that, you've given me SO much already and I am truly thankful!' And I really was. God had his own plan in mind. Hours later I drifted in and out of a daze, read some, snacked some more, and almost forgot about that prayer that I had made. We were out of the park boundaries traveling at a good speed when out of no where Brent said "Giraffes!" And low and behold, for a few glorious seconds I looked to my right and saw not only 1 but 4 giraffes standing 20 feet apart of the side of the road looking our direction. It was almost as if they were a part of a dominos game how well they were lined up, just waiting for someone to come and knock the first one down. I couldn't help but laugh out loud at what had just happened. Such beautiful and majestic creatures. God wants to bless us! Not only does He want to move giraffes out of a park and line them up on the side of the road just to be sure we see them, He wants to think thousands of years ahead of someones life just to give them a small gift of a shooting star. These are small things. They are not things that change our lives dramatically. Sure, it's fun to say "I saw a giraffe on the side of the road" (although most Americans seem to think that a normal occurrence for someone living in Africa, it's really NOT), but it's not life altering. It doesn't have anything to do with what my profession may be, how many children I have, or where I live. They are simply small gifts. Great ones, but small none the less. How awesome of a God we serve that he wants to do that for us! It blows my mind. We all have our days where we seriously struggle, the Lord knows that I've had mine even in the past few months, but behind them all is a God who cares immensely for us! I can't think of any other way to describe it. God want's to give freely and abundantly, and it starts with accepting His greatest gift for us, His life.
"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 1 Thes. 5:16-18
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