Higher Ways

Yo,

so today was a lazy day like many others recently. My lab meeting was cancelled, so I was planning to wake up early and go do a bunch of experiments. Instead I ended up sleeping in pretty late and only doing a bit of writing work at home while also cutting my hair and cleaning up some stuff and playing some games. Wednesdays have become my P2C days since I'm usually there for lab meeting anyways. So I went to school for prayer meeting at 5:30. (Ended up catching a Chansey in Pokemon GO even though I thought I never would.)

But the really awesome thing happened at prayer meeting. We were praying through Psalm 31 where David is calling to God to be his refuge and talks about how God cares for the humble, but not so much for the proud. The prayer leader asked us to think about times God had humbled us. I thought of a few things, but the one that stood out to me was a time almost 6 years ago when I was in East Asia.

It was a normal day about 3/4 of the way through our time there on a missions trip. We were at the stage of having deeper conversations with friends and really sharing the gospel with our friends and inviting them to consider what it meant in their lives. I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure at least once on this particular day our friends had not ended up meeting with us even though they had said they would. This time in particular it was like 2 hours later and they still hadn't messaged us or anything. So I was feeling really frustrated at how all of my planning had failed. But the only thing that came to mind was a hymn. I think it was Be Thou my Vision, or maybe Come thou Fount. Either way it was surprising to me. Why would I be singing in a time like this?

Later that afternoon we met up with the rest of the Canadians and we found out that this one guy had shared the gospel and like 3 of them came to know Jesus as their saviour! The chestnut gang or something was their name? I was feeling really unhappy. Why should all of his friends accept Jesus and I can't even meet up with my friends. And I really struggled through what it meant to have the joy of salvation. In the end I learned of how God's plans are really higher than mine and that when my plans fail His are always at work, but it wasn't until today that I kinda figured out why a song had come to me. When sinners repent and turn to Jesus all heaven rejoices! The angels in heaven were singing and that overflowed into me? I think that's pretty crazy that kinda out of nowhere I'd have a song of praise while at the same moment men and women were turning to Jesus. Crazy.

It's crazy to think that things like that when we have no idea why things are happening God will eventually help us see what He was doing and why He did it that way. I still don't know why I didn't get to meet up with my friends, but humbling praise while He works is kinda awesome anyways. If only I thought this way more often.

God is great and His ways are higher. May His praises always be on our lips.

D.Fa