another excerpt from courtney's journal

Caveat Emptor:

The following is an excerpt from my private journal. Some, reading what I've written, will interpret me as being arrogant, self-important, self-righteous. Please know that I don't intend these thoughts to come across this way. These thoughts are the result of my ruminations about my own life as I look back at times in which I followed the will of God and at times in which I didn't. Some of *those* thoughts are too private to share. So what you see here is the conclusion of those thoughts: an account of a part of my life in which I can see God's will at work; an account relating to several friends in whose lives I can see God's will at work. None of this means that we are better than anyone else; none of this means that any of us always follow God's will. It just means that this is a brief excerpt from my journal and a brief excerpt from my life. I'll write about my many failures another time. :o)

Excerpt from my journal:

A few years ago, April was looking at her brother Jonathan’s wedding pictures. In those pictures, she saw faces she recognized, and she was amazed at what the intervening years had brought. She told me about this, and I, too, felt amazed at the detail in God’s planning:

* In the pictures, April recognized Ed and me, whom she didn’t know then.
* She recognized Clint, whom she didn’t know then.
* At that wedding, April didn’t know that her future husband was present.
* Ed and I already knew Clint, but we didn't know that he was one of our future missions co-workers.
* We didn't know that the highschooler (April) who sang at the wedding was one of our future co-workers.
* Clint and April didn’t know that they would end up working as missionaries in Chemnitz.
* And yet, we were all there in the same place.

We didn’t know, we didn’t know, we didn’t know. God knew it all, and even then, he was working on our hearts and on the hearts of other people all over the world to bring us all to the place, spiritually and physically, where he knew we needed to be.

We didn’t know, we didn’t know, we didn’t know. What don’t we know now? Someday, we will look back on today and marvel at the things God is doing even now to fulfill his plans for us for the future. The things we will look back on, God already knew before he spoke the first word that brought the world into existence.

And now I move on to a greater scale beyond the four of us: If you, today, are obeying the will of God, if you are following the path that he has laid out for you, if your heart is turned toward him and you are trusting him to lead you…then you are doing things and living a life the details of which God had in mind before Creation. If you are living out the will of God, then you are living exactly what God set into motion when he spoke the world into existence. He set things into motion, and if you are living a life that pleases him, then what you are, who you are, is a direct result of the will that was God’s even before he said, “Let there be light.”

Human language is inadequate for describing the immense significance of what and who you are, the intricate and millennia-spanning connection between You and the very beginnings of Creation, if you are living a life that is pleasing to God. What you are living didn't start with you...it started before Creation, if you are living out God's will.

This is a grand, awe-inspiring, immeasurable concept…and one that is very humbling.