Highview To Thailand!: This

[On Sunday morning at Highview, I was invited to participate in a morning of 'God Stories' where folks share how they've encountered God in various moments of their lives. Fresh off our most recent trip to Hot Springs, I had many to choose from. I chose this moment, because....God is faithful.]

Here's a little song I've taught to the children at Hot Springs.

The Lord has a will

and I have a need

to follow that will,

to humbly be still,

to rest in it, nest in it,

fully be blessed in it,

following my Father's will.

Amy Grant

In emails and letters and blogs, I have told and will keep on telling the God stories that describe the broader things He is doing among us and for us at New Family Foundation.

You’ll hear more about the New Property, about specific children’s lives and how they’ve been changed, about the recent Team’s experiences later on in February when we’ve been invited to bring a report. Keep checking on [this] Highview to Thailand blog. And if you want to be added to our monthly email list, please just let me know. You’ll get lots of God-stories there.

So many God-stories, so little time.

For this morning, I wanted to share something more personal. And it has to do with this song.

I’ve taught it to our gathered family at Hot Springs for a few reasons.

For one, it’s simple and repeatable and has the rhyming thing going on that is so helpful in teaching English. And we know that in learning a new language, music is a great way to get it into that different part of your brain than where language is stored. So, a good teaching tool.

But also, there's the message of it. The gentleness of it. The needful place of it for children whose early lives have included various degrees of neglect and rejection and trauma…to internalize this idea that a loving Father has a plan and a purpose and will for them….to know that they can rest in it, nest it and fully be blessed in it….I want our kids not just to know that, but to feel it.

And music does that.

This past trip, on the last day before we left, the Friday afternoon,

when the kids got back from school, we didn’t do our usual English learning groups. Instead, we had some games available, and I brought out the paper and markers and scissors and glue, and just let them go at it to make things for their Sponsors.

There’s this happy chaos that goes on around that table when we do this. Big mess, kids passing around the supplies, asking me how to spell things, kids presenting their work to me for admiration, and making me promise to bring it back for their Sponsors, which by the way they all know by name.

And that last afternoon, as I was sitting at that table, one of the kids starts singing….the Lord has a will, and I have a need. And without any interruption to what they were doing, they all quietly join in, me too, just around that table, affirming their safety in the nesting of God’s will for them.

They’re safe.

And it is not lost on me, in that moment. That they are here, right around me, safe. Because if they weren’t here…..

And I’ll inject the harshness of this thought into this sweet moment, because that’s how it happened for me, I believe being placed there by the Spirit of God speaking to me in that moment. That there’s no telling what they might be doing on a given Friday afternoon if they weren’t here, in light of the disturbing statistics on the plight of children born into poverty, and its connection to the more sinister underbelly of the tourism industry in southeast Asia.

And it ambushes me in that moment. I have to stop singing.

But the Spirit doesn’t let me off there. I think it’s plenty enough, but He wants to take it further.

And I am reminded of all the times in my own childhood when maybe I didn’t feel important or seen or safe. And I fast forward through my teen and young adult years, though the decades of my life, closing in on seven of them now, and all the times I was confused and wondering what good God might possibly be able to extract from the darker chapters of my story.

And in that moment, with children singing around me, I hear Him say just one word.

“This.”

As in all of this is actually a glimpse of how God makes all the sad things untrue eventually.

One day. Right now.

So, this morning I want to bear testimony to the faithfulness of God, Who has indeed had a will for my life, and I have indeed had a need to rest in it, nest it, and fully be blessed it, following that will no matter what.

Rev. Ruth Anne Breithaupt, MDiv.

Canadian Representative/Missionary in Residence

New Family Foundation/Highview Community Church