"Have the people sit down."

I share this for my own accountability and hopefully to encourage someone else who is waiting for God to answer a prayer. I guess you could call this an update to the update posted a few days ago on our family’s moving status.

After getting excited about pieces seeming to fit together in our search for God’s will in a place to move, we went to look at a rental property yesterday. It sounded perfect, a farm house for rent just minutes away from a piece of property that also looked promising. We knew it needed some work but after looking around, we left feeling more overwhelmed than at peace about moving in (quite a bit of hazards including more cow patties between the car and the front door than we were expecting). What started as a day full of excitement ended as one of discouragement as we felt even more up in the air about this decision of where to move.  

Oh, praise God that His mercies are new every morning. Tim’s readings this morning were in Psalms where David describes how God comforted him in uncertain times. It was exactly what he needed to hear today!  My message from God came from the gospels and the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish. I noticed something I had never seen before in this story. Just before the miracle, Jesus asked Phillip what they were to do, “Where are we going to buy bread, so that these may eat?” He asked. The passage goes on to read, “This He was saying to test him (Phillip), for He Himself knew what He was intending to do.” Then Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.”

Because I believe what Romans 15:4 says, “For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction so that through perserverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”, I applied the lessons learned by the disciples in the feeding of the 5000 to our own life. Our discouragement last night came in our attempt to answer a question similar to the one posed by Christ to Phillip, “How in the world are you going to do this?” The details just don’t fit together yet as we contemplate options in front of us. This morning, however, we are reminded again that we can’t figure out all the details for this assignment God has planned for us.  Then Jesus said, “just sit down and watch”.

We still have no idea of where we will be going when we close on our house in just over a month but today we will sit down and watch God work out and reveal to us those details. I can’t help but wonder if when he told them all to sit down he added, “just watch out for the cow poo”.