Every Fall, Cru sends coaches to each STINT team around the world to check on them, help them in whatever way they can, and just provide encouragement and love from their home country. Nancy and Dennis arrived Sunday, filled our days with meetings (individual and group) and advice, then got back on a train to Schiphol Airport on Wednesday. After coming back from China, it just added to the whirlwind of my life right now. As Nancy and I met in our last one-on-one chat on Tuesday, she quoted some verses from Psalm 139 to me:
"For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.
[Psalm 139:13-18]
Nancy really drove into my memory that God's thoughts of and about me outnumber the grains of sand on the Earth. As someone who grew up near the beach, it really spoke to me. Imagine this: picking up a handful of sand; that's a lot of grains of sand. Imagine sitting on the beach, looking to your left and right; that's a heck of a lot of grains of sand. Imagine looking out at the ocean, lined along the bottom with countless grains of sand. Add all that together PLUS things like sandboxes for children. There's a lot of grains of sand on this earth. And God's thoughts of ME outnumber those. And because I am His daughter and creation, every single one of them is a GOOD thought.
After sitting with her for that hour, talking about this and coming up with ideas, I told her that that day, Tuesday, was the best I had felt in about a month. They always say November is the hardest month for STINTers, and that was true for me. Through some team misunderstandings and personal struggles, it was a hard month. But Dennis and Nancy's visit, especially my talks with Nancy, revived my hope, joy, and excitement for the rest of the year here. But no matter what happens, all my days have been ordained for me, before I was even formed. God knows what he is doing.
"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.
Later on, however, it produces a
harvest of righteousness and peace
for those who have been trained by it."
[Hebrews 12:11]
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