Happy Wednesday Poplar Springs 🙂
Andy is doing what he does best this week – driving all over the place and putting in 700% of the work we expect of him. He didn’t ask any of us to help him out but I’ve taken over the newsletter anyway in his absence to share a devotional thought with you as we wrap up the summer and begin looking ahead.
Four extremely brave adults (David Bryson, Robert Callahan, Heather Wright, and Jessi Peeler) and 13 guys from our youth group spent 8 days in Franklin, NC this summer on a mission trip. In the evenings, after long hours of work in the hot sun, we would shower, eat dinner, and head to worship. The theme for the week was “Uncharted” and our speaker led us through the life of Moses from beginning to end. We of course can read Moses’ story thousands of years after his death and smile the whole time while thinking, “What an awesome story it is and how God showed up time and time again! Wow Moses…. what a life you led, buddy!” But the reality is that Moses had to have been plagued with fear, doubt, and frustration. From Moses’ eyes it was a life left uncharted. He didn’t get a game plan at the beginning… no road map… his life undoubtedly twisted and turned in directions at which Moses would never have guessed.
We don’t have the same story as Moses. None of us were dropped into a river as babies or raised in a palace. To my knowledge, none of us have committed murder and escaped into a desert. And definitely, from the looks of it, none of us have had to lead an incredulously whiny bunch of people in circles in the wilderness just to make it to a Promised Land and die on the edge of it—yikes. BUT… we DO live uncharted lives like Moses. We too can’t see where we are going. We often think we know the plan and then it turns out wildly different. We live lives filled with fear, doubt, and frustration for the same reasons that Moses did.
The solace, however, is that our lives aren’t actually uncharted. They aren’t actually unknown.
Just because we can’t see where we are going does not mean that God doesn’t see where we are going. The God of all creation… of all powers… of all knowledge… He knows exactly where we are headed. He knows every detail about the lives He laid out before us. And when we take a step into what is the great unknown to us, it is really the great KNOWN to God.
We may have questions and concerns but we can wake up each day and walk with confidence that the Lord knows each of our steps. He is neither surprised nor shaken by what may come for He has ordained every bit of it. May you continue onward as you start a new semester, a new job, an old and tiring job, or any other challenge you face knowing that the God that breathed you into existence has the whole journey mapped out and is along for the ride.
Nicole Hamrick