A Chronicle of His Faithfulness

Last week, we had the honor and privilege of having our dear friend from Chad stay several days with us. She has lived and worked in the cities and rural areas of Chad for the past twenty five years, faithfully doing everything from agricultural management to tutoring -- loving the scores of people whom God has placed on her path.

She was in town last week attending a conference at a nearby college.  One evening when she returned, I saw her water bottle and offered to fill it with cold water from the fridge.  She replied joyfully, "Oh, I am just so glad to be able to drink water from the tap."  That is something I don't even think about.  To her, that is a luxury.

At times, her assignments have appeared custom-designed to draw on her particular gifts and abilities. Sometimes she is totally out of her league, doing that for which she has not been trained or feels confident doing. And still at other times, it is sheer obedience to God to even get out of bed in the morning, knowing her tasks for the day.

But after these many years, she has learned that divine appointments are not necessarily tasks she loves doing.  Over the decades, she has learned to just do it.  And do it fully, knowing somehow, some way, God is using it.  Sometimes God's mysterious purposes are revealed as she is doing them, sometimes years later ("oh, that's why that happened,") and yet at all times, she knows those reasons will not be fully grasped until God brings us Home.

"This is not my gift" is not a valid excuse before God's divine appointments.

And when her work has seemed so mundane or fruitless or a daily struggle, she has learned the meaning of "the strength of the LORD," for she could do nothing at all without Him.  She has experienced dimensions of God I will never know.

For years, she has been keeping a chronicle of God's faithfulness to her.  When you are in the African bush, one sees and appreciates the tiniest details.  Even His smallest favors are HUGE miracles to her.  It does not have to be something "supernatural" for it to be a miracle, for indeed God only works supernaturally.  But God has trained her heart and eyes to recognize His hand of faithfulness in all things.

She returned late one evening, full of excitement.  She had just been driving to a gas station when something caught her eye, a flicker of light perhaps from the street lamp or a shadow on the pavement.  But suddenly just in the nick of time to veer out of the way, she realized it was a skunk.  She was thrilled, not by her own self-awareness and excellent driving skills, but that God had delivered her from a collision not easily overcome, the invasive putrid odor of a skunk.

She was thankful for that rescue, as well as being aware of His deliverance from the skunks she does not see.  His faithfulness is not dependent on her recognizing it.

That experience will be jotted down in her chronicle of God's faithfulness.  She keeps a running journal of those specific instances where she grasps even a glimpse of His faithfulness.  She is on the lookout for His hand.  One of her great dismays recently was the disappearance of that electronic journal.  She began it again this week, this time saving it to the "cloud" to refrain her from accidentally deleting that chronicle again.

But even in this, even with a new journal, she knows that all those instances of His faithfulness have not been deleted at all.  They are still there, surrounding her at all times.  God is faithful.

But this I call to mind,
   and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
     great is Your faithfulness.

                        Lamentations 3. 21-23

I hope that song gets stuck in your thoughts today,
          all day in all things.