Be still and know

It´s only nine in the morning, but so far it´s been a moving and utterly profound day.

A hodgepodge of ideas and thoughts are floating around in my head right now, and there´s no way I can fit them all into this post, much less in a cohesive manner, but I´ll attempt nonetheless. Here goes.

Yesterday was not a good day for me. The past few days in general, actually, haven´t been great. After the tremendous high last week with the team from Tennessee, this week has been a downer. I´m here at the church from about 7 in the morning until about 5 or 6 at night, but this week I haven´t had much to do. I teach English for about a half hour a day, and the rest of my time is to myself. One starts to feel a little lonely. Yesterday morning my loneliness reached a new zenith, and I contemplated whether not I was an effective worker here, and what I saw the rest of my time here looking like (read: I thought about coming home early). I talked to good ol Mom about it, and she was encouraging, but it was a taxing conversation for me. It´s tough to feel like things aren´t happening at all the way you envisioned them, tougher to feel this and simutaneously feel useless as a worker... like you´re out of your comfort zone for nothing. Even tougher is to admit all this to yourself and then to someone else. Luckily, I was called away to help pre-cook breakfast for the next day. I say luckily because I was about to break into tears... something, for those of you who know me fairly well, never happens.

This morning, as I was sitting here in a bit of a better mood, God put on my heart what I think he´s trying to teach me through this. I can´t remember how it came to pass, but Psalms 46:10 came to mind. In my restlessness, my eagerness to feel useful and be ever working, I was reminded that I need to ¨Be still and know that (he) is God...¨ His plans and his vision for this trip are more perfect than mine ever were. I need to realize that. This frustration, this loneliness is all for a reason, ¨For we know in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.¨ What a fantastic realization for me... I read the rest of the Psalm and a couple verses really stuck out: ¨4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. 5 God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.¨ The Psalm sets up a cool dichotomy, exalting the power of God in everything he does on the Earth, the destruction he is able to engender, and mingled with these exclamations are affirmations of his care and protection for his people. Verses 4 and 5 remind me of how awesome it is to belong to this powerful God, and what´s more, to have him live in us and, more than protect us, make us glad. God is mighty - mighty to save - and he delights in us and works all things out for our good. Things like loneliness and a feeling of uselessness in a foreign country.

So, as I work through this - I genuinely do feel like I could be using my time more productively, and I don´t think this feeling will go away if the status quo remains - I have been encouraged to be patient, be still, and know that he is a God who dwells within me and that his rivers, his streams, are meant to make me glad.

So we´ll see what God has in store for me here, whether I continue to spend my days at the church and Davíd finds more for me to do here, or if I work on another of his projects, or if I move to another ministry entirely. Time will tell, but for now I´m trying to work out what it looks like to rest in what God has prepared for me, even to rejoice in it.

That was about half of what I had going on in my head, but the other half is only slightly related, so I´ll save it for another day. By the way, today makes one month of being here. It simultaneously seems like it´s been only a week and as much as a year.

All the best from Guatemala, and thanks for your continued prayers.

-Daniel