In March of this year I was asked by my friend Carter to volunteer a month of my summer to serve on summer staff at Young Life’s Saranac Village in Saranac Lake, NY. In a relatively reluctant fashion I said yes. I had several reasons why I should go, such as two of my friends from Stonewall Jackson high school who were going to be on work crew and good friends of mine Carter and Sarah Riner who would also be serving for the month. After weighing the pros and cons I decided to join the summer staff, assign team and work crew at Saranac.
While serving at Saranac my job was program tech; my responsibilities were running the lights and sound for meals and club room activities(club, role play, sells for events) along with those it was to set up sound systems around camp for campers. If my memory serves me it was day 3 of our second week of camp. Day 3 means waking up at 7am and working very hard all day until 11:30 or midnight.
Right after lunch that day I was walking back up from the beach after moving a speaker system from the beach to the rodeo site. I was walking back up towards the top of camp and I decided to take the least steep path up the hill that is a Frisbee golf hole through the woods. As I was walking up the hill I was praying, or complaining, to God about my time at Saranac. I was saying things like “God, why did you bring me here? I don’t want to be here, you only brought me here because of Hunter and Zack being here…Why is it so sunny out here? Why is this hill so steep? Why did you make my heart suck so that I can’t walk up hills?!” By this time, I had now aimed my face skyward as if to air my frustration with the Lord more clearly. About the time I thought I had God convinced that he was in the wrong here and that he made a mistake he told me one simple sentence that has changed my life and how I look at God.
“Jeremy…I created the color green because I love you...look around.”
Are you kidding me!?...and as the dust of my frustration settled and my eyes focused back on what I was looking at I realized that while I was shouting at the sky I was missing every bit of what God was trying to show me. The thousands of shades of green of the canopy that I had never paid attention to before and the woods all around me were pleading with me to see God in every bit of it. I then sat down and spent 3 or 4 minutes marveling at God’s creation and letting myself how much God loves me that he would not only make one shade of green but thousands. God continued “Jeremy, you look for me in big things and you ask me even BIGGER questions…but you don’t ask me small questions and you DON’T look for me in the details. Don’t lose me in the details.”
My prayer is that you wont lose God in the details, God created macaroni and cheese so that you would know how much he loves you. God created everything that you call “favorite” to use it as a megaphone of his love for you in all of creation.
Maybe the Lord is pleading with you to slow down and look around and see all the ways he loves you. Will you stop complaining and listen?
4 comments:
Jimmy Sheep. I love this. I love you. My favorite part is, "About the time I thought I had God convinced that he was in the wrong here and that he made a mistake he told me-" Isn't that always how it is? We know in our hearts that as soon as we get angry enough at Him, he will turn things around. Yet, we still keep getting angry at the *god of the universe* even though somewhere deep down in our "always right" hearts that we are not always right. But, maybe that is the beauty of it. Not that we continue to grow angry with our God, but that we are able to experience that forget-then-remember feeling. And everytime we remember, it is always through something beautifully new, however something that has always been so ordinary and just-there. Maybe this is why we need to grow angry. How beautiful is it that our Lord will let us grow just far enough away so that he can snap us right back with such a thrill? It's like when you strap yourself into one of those bungee cord suit things at after prom and you run as fast as you can away from where the cord is connected to the giant blow up thing and *just* when you think you made it off the edge, that way-snappier-than-you-thought-it-was cord does its thang and you're right back where you started within 2 seconds. We know it's going to happen. And maybe that's why we do it, because whether we are aware of it or not, we know somewhere that it will happen. We think we are angry, and we might be a little bit. But I think that we mostly get angry just for an excuse to jump on the thrill ride that we call Jesus Christ.
You're awesome, Jeremy.
OK I officially am stoked for Sheps blog and Kayleigh's comment..... seriously stoked.. and stoked about Mac and cheese... seriously stoked
This is great stuff dude! I have definitely been in this situation before. It's funny (at least to me) how the smallest things can bring about such a big change of heart. He knows us so well.
I could spend another weekend with you leading up to a mutual friend's wedding, and that would be very good. Also, this post is beyond words. I just want to echo the title. It's so great.
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