Over

It's late.

I'm at that delicate balance between wired and crashing, where I know that all sleep requires is horizontal stillness...perhaps merely laying my head down here on the dining table, where instead I feverishly peck at my keyboard.

Read college essays, give feedback--round two, three, four. An excel sheet sums up the future for thirteen high school seniors. I double check the bills and initial each one. M. Y. C. The letters blend together. A symbol meaning I'm here. Duty done. Unexpected expectations, fulfilled.

With the exception of the concerned parent in Korea I just emailed, the rest of my world sleeps. On nights like tonight, I remember the silent strength I learned in high school--that second wind I discovered on late nights spent finishing a book for AP English or another costume for the stage production I designed. A perseverance beyond the norm--my daddy's "do what you have to" attitude, applied and mastered. Somehow, busyness was happier then.

Last week, my pastor and his wife were gracious enough to invite me over after work (despite my late night schedule) to process through some of my current frustrations with life. The conversation quickly turned into a discussion of God's sovereignty. What if--I posed my greatest fear--I did something to step out of the will of God?

Nearly a week later, Scott's reply rings clearly: you have to remember that you are exactly where God wants you--that there's nothing you did, or could have done, to step outside of that. This may not be where He wants you a year from now or even in just a few months, but if you really believe that what Scripture says is true--then you must also believe that you didn't make a mistake somewhere along the line that surprised God, nor does He have you in some holiness holding pen, waiting for you to figure a few things out before He gives you what you "really want." Here and now are in God's will. To think you can screw that up is to shrink God.

It's a lot of Christianese that I should probably clarify, although the creeping hours of night discourage me from it--his point was simply, trust in God.

At Shoreline, part of our mission statement is that we want to present everyone in West LA with "full and accurate picture of God." I enjoy striving toward that--seeing practically in my life where my weak faith directly correlates to a limited understanding of God's greatness. Bible verses, conditioned into memory like a secular mantra parade, can only have a lasting effect if I trust that the God who inspired them is really Who He says He is: perfectly loving, perfectly just, perfectly gracious, perfectly pure, perfectly holy, righteous, omniscient, omnipotent, and so on.

Then to know that this God--so big, so beyond my comprehension--also knows and cares for the intimate desires of my heart...it blows my mind.

In the middle of the night, when restlessness finally gives in to peace, I know it's a gift of God. Lately, I'm not particularly happy with my circumstances. I tend to feel anxious and overwhelmed, overworked, ineffective. Then, arching over it all, a gentle reminder that God is bigger. A children's song. A simple truth. Words from a good friend. Joy.

On my table, in a vase, two lilies open wide and full, a fragrance of life. A screwdriver still feels fixing my doornob. A wine class, emptied.

I close my day.