For Such A Time As This

It came as an email early on Tuesday morning. What a way to deliver the news. All I could do was lean back in my computer chair and rub my eyes. Wes’s dad had just passed away. I didn’t know what to do. My heart was shatter for the family who lost their son just a few years before. The pain they were dealing with was something that I couldn’t wrap my mind around. The funeral was set for Friday and after talking it over with my mom, I decided that I needed to be there. I lead an accountability group for Wes and his friends in high school and wanted to be able to support them through this tough time.

The funeral brought back hard memories of when another one of the students in Wes’s grade committed suicide; those were dark days, but I did my best to stand by them as they grieved. Death is hard. The service was beautiful. One of my favorite pastor’s talked about Wes’s dad and did a great job of helping those in attendance to remember the incredible man that he was. When the audience dismissed and everyone lined up to console the family, I looked around and began seeing all of the guys that I once met with on a weekly basis. I made the rounds and hugged each one tightly, making small talk about where they were going to school next year. There is never anything great to say at a funeral. The real answers to the standard small talk questions of how are you doing and what have you been up just don’t seem to have very pretty answers.

Driving back to Baylor that afternoon I thought about what a unique opportunity the Lord had given me. Throughout high school I had scattered the seed and been active in the lives of the guys who were at the funeral. Most of the time I spent with them I felt terribly insufficient. The Sunday afternoons when we got together often seemed like a waste of time, because I was only a few years older than them and the things I had to say did not stimulate the most captivating small group discussions.

Ephesians 3: 20 “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to the power of his will to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations for ever and ever! Amen”

In the midst of my feelings of insufficiency and during the small group times that I felt like a failure, God was positioning me to respond to the email I received on Tuesday. He set my relationships up for his glory and he was doing more than I could ask for or imagine.

Don’t give up on the friendships with people who don’t know the Lord. Keep loving your enemies. Don’t get tired of doing what is good. We’re not seeing the whole picture and it will not be revealed to us until we are in heaven. Find peace knowing that we are only seeing a sliver of the picture and God is a much better painted than you or I.