God With Us

So, I am chaperoning a confirmation retreat for our 10th graders at St. C's this weekend. I always love retreats and I am super excited to see how God will work in the lives of these students. We are expecting 50 kids, so please be praying for a fruitful weekend and many hearts changed for Christ!

We have a handful of upperclassmen coming along to help with the retreat - giving testimonies and helping lead small group discussion, etc. We got to hear some of their witness talks tonight and I was BLOWN AWAY. They were so refreshing and insightful and really made me excited about the weekend. Of course, I was pretty emotional about them...hopefully the 10th graders won't think I'm crazy/having some kind of breakdown during the talks. :)

One of the girls has suffered an incredible amount of loss in her 16 years, and was so humble in sharing with us today. I was so proud of her. This was some of the scripture she shared with us along with her testimony (from Psalm 22):

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me,

so far from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,

by night, and am not silent.
3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;

you are the praise of Israel. [a]
4 In you our fathers put their trust;

they trusted and you delivered them.
5 They cried to you and were saved;

in you they trusted and were not disappointed.
6 But I am a worm and not a man,

scorned by men and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;

they hurl insults, shaking their heads:
8 "He trusts in the LORD;

let the LORD rescue him.

Let him deliver him,

since he delights in him."
9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;

you made me trust in you

even at my mother's breast.
10 From birth I was cast upon you;

from my mother's womb you have been my God.
11 Do not be far from me,

for trouble is near

and there is no one to help.

On my drive home, I was thinking about these students and praying for their testimonies and the souls of everyone who will be at the retreat this weekend. I was looking at the moon - which, right now, is the waning phase - you can only see a little over half of it. When I first looked at it, I thought "it looks like it has been torn". That's stupid, I thought. I took astronomy, I know about the lunar phases...of course it's not "torn" or "broken" - but then I felt the urge to go a little further with the thought, even though it seemed silly at first.

Okay, God. Show me what you mean.

The moon (depending on the phase or clouds or shadows) sometimes looks broken. It looks torn, it looks...incomplete. We know that, in reality, it is not. The moon is whole, but we cannot always see it in it's entirety. There are clouds, shadows, circumstances blocking the reflection of the sun's light. This is God's design.

Sound familiar? We think "my life is broken/torn/incomplete". It is not.

This is God's design.

Most of the time we can only see part of the big picture. No matter how dark or confusing or painful, sometimes this is precisely because God wants to reveal the whole picture...and, the whole picture...breathtaking.