How God Works

 So a year ago, for my husband's 50th birthday, we all went to the Big Island of Hawaii.  We stayed in Kona and had an absolute blast.  Well, one Sunday, as we were walking by the Catholic church, we noticed a bunch of students on the sidewalk praying for the 40 days for Life campaign.  We were so impressed with these students, and their calm but determined demeanor as they prayed in public on the street.  My attention was drawn to them, and I heard one of the students say that they were with YWAM.  I didn't know what that was.  Later in the trip, we passed by a college campus, called "University of the Nations", and I was curious about what THAT was as well, and told my husband that I had a feeling the students we saw on the street praying were from this university.  Turns out I was right, as a quick Google search showed.  It's a Christian University that trains missionaries.  We also drove by a "Kalani" street, and I took a picture of the road sign, and sent it to my friend Beth, whose son's name is Kalani.  Kalani is of Hawaiian heritage.  Long story short - I texted Beth repeatedly from Hawaii about this "University of the Nations", and YWAM, and how I felt like this would be such a great place for Kalani to come for college.  Just seemed like such a natural fit.  

A year later (tonight), Beth texted me to ask the name of the student group I texted about for her son all those months ago.  When I told her YWAM from Kona, she sent me a "mind blown" emoji.  Apparently, she never mentioned to Kalani about my texts last year.  This past weekend, though, he met up with some Youth With a Mission students from Kona who came HERE to the Keweenaw.  They met and talked, and Kalani tonight came to his mother and said that he feels God calling him very specifically to go to school in Kona!  Hello.  The very same place I felt he needed to be a year ago - even though I really don't know Kalani at all.  

Sometimes, God isn't so subtle.  Sometimes He uses peripheral people to confirm a message He's speaking into someone's heart.  Sometimes, something random isn't random at all.  

Crazy.  

A Meditation.

 

Is a seed meant to be a seed?

Is a seed’s destiny fulfilled if it stays in its hard shell, intact, complete, whole?

Is it content in its dormancy, oblivious in sleep?

Maybe.  Maybe. 

But how does the seed awaken? 

It drowns. 

It drowns. 

It drowns.

It softens. 

It cracks. 

It is torn asunder. 

It is destroyed.

Only then does something new emerge.  

Something greener, and more alive.  

This new thing; it digs, and burrows, as it surges forth from the old.

Sprouts root to anchor itself, but it does not stop there.

For its journey is upwards. 

 It searches, seeks, orients itself. 

 Hidden under, in the dark, how does it know which way is up?  For if it stays underground, it creates its own demise.

How does the seed know which way is up?

When it finally bursts from the bonds of  earth,

exploding unfettered from the soil,

 it is not pushed  from below but pulled from above.  

The sun draws this new thing to itself, and it grows and broadens and branches. 

 The tender, vulnerable shoot inches ever higher, ever closer.

The slight becomes full,

pale verdant

the malleable solid

 ‘til it is immense and broad,

rugged against howling winds, immovable, roots grasping the earth, leaves singing aloft,

 the home of birds, the food of squirrels,  protection for the exposed.  

It reaches higher, a bridge.

This strange journey is not one from young to old,

 but from old to new,

From inert to alive.  

Not from here to there, but from this to that.

 The seed is no longer merely of the earth, but also of the heavens.

If the seed holds on too tightly to itself, it stays a seed.

It can only live fully if it is willing to die.

Thought of the Day: St. Robert Bellarmine

 

"The school of Christ is the school of love. In the last day, when the general examination takes place ... Love will be the whole syllabus."
— St. Robert Bellarmine

A Poem, by Rudyard Kipling

 Do not hold tightly to the things of this earth, but know your place in it!

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!