Beautiful In Its Time

It has been almost a year since my hiatus from writing this blog. Not because I didn't want to write, but because I didn't know what to write. I didn't want to add any worthless words to the cacophony of voices who already had said all there was to say. However, recently my life has hit a point of change. My health is finally starting to improve, yet all my job applications have gone unanswered. Finding a church to belong to is still eluding me. My life is still not quite where I was hoping it would be.

In December last year, after having applied for multiple laboratory skill jobs, I applied for a scientist role recommended by a friend that I was almost certain I would get. I was so excited at the prospect of finally being in a laboratory that I was almost sick with anxiety while waiting for the phone call to say I had gotten an interview. I was told by my friend that it would likely be in the new year, so the waiting continued for the first few weeks of January while my family and I were in New Zealand to visit my aunt, uncle, and cousins for Christmas/New Year. By the time the last weekend of our stay rolled around when we attended a worship service at my family's church, I still hadn't received a call. However, during and after the service, one of the pastors, Ben, had a word of encouragement from God for me. It was so specific and incredible that I was in no doubt that God loved me, knew me, and was in control of my uncertain future - for the first time in a long time, I felt it deep in my soul. Also for the first time, I began to wonder if I wouldn't get that scientist job after all. I looked at the reasons why I wanted the job so badly, and it hit me that it was maybe more selfish than I first realised. Yes, I would be using the degree that I felt God called me to, but I would be "in control" - the same pattern of familiarity and comfortability every day, hardly needing to interact with people regularly (a dream!), and a (false) sense of control in my life. Which, without realising it until then, would take away my need to rely on the Lord daily for strength, support, and protection.

Funnily enough, I didn't get that scientist role. I was later told by my friend that there was an internal transfer for the role which she had no idea about. I wasn't surprised though. With everything Pastor Ben had said to me, I was finally able to relinquish the control I thought I had with my future by applying to all these laboratory jobs and giving that control I never actually had over to the Lord. Much of what Ben said I wish to keep private for the time being, but something I will share is that he believed I had a voice that God wanted to use. "Can you sing?" he had asked at the time, and I had said yes. But after a conversation with my mum yesterday, she wondered if my voice would be used not in singing, but rather in writing.

I woke up this morning, not with the pressure to write, but with the knowledge that I had to write. Yet I had no clue what it was that I would say. In the past whenever I would write a blog post here, it was always because something in my life had triggered it. This time though, there were some ideas of what I could say, but nothing I felt certain that I should say. So I prayed. "Lord, if You want me to speak, You have to give me something to say. Something that comes with a Bible verse so that I know it will be from You." Almost immediately, Ecclesiastes 3:11 came to mind:

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NKJV; italics and bold mine)

Well Lord, what a verse to pick, I'd thought. It almost made me laugh aloud. Ecclesiastes - a book filled with highs and lows, melancholy and joy, life and death, reverence and wisdom. A rather apt book for my Heavenly Father to turn me towards. A book that reminds us to be faithful in trusting in the Lord, even when we cannot see what He is doing. That reminds us to cling to Him in the uncertainty of this fallen world, believing that He will make everything beautiful in its time. Not when we want, how we want it. Undoubtedly, we would rush things to make everything messy in our own time. I know I've certainly done that when I have done things my way instead of His. As it says in Isaiah 55:8-11:

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.'" Isaiah 55:8-11 (ESV; italics and bold mine)

God has a perfect plan and a purpose for all His children and for all of creation. That plan, that purpose, that timing, may not look even remotely like what we think or want. But that is surely a good thing, for we no longer need be in control of whether our plans succeed. When we entrust our ways, our thoughts, and our lives to the Lord, we can rest in the knowledge that He will make everything beautiful in its time.

Right now, I don't believe the lab is where God wants me. It's clearly also not at a bunch of other places I applied for work either. I am still confident that my Bachelor of Biomedical Science will be used for something one day; after all, I know that God called me to it. I am also confident that my Masters of Divinity that He called me to last year (which I would have deferred had I gotten the job!) will equally be used for Him. And ultimately the Holy Spirit's prompting to use my voice in this way at this time (when I have so much more time than I ever have before) will not be for nothing either. There is a purpose in all of this - my lack of job, my life experiences, my studies, my singleness, and my health. I can't see it yet, but I will continue to put my hope and trust in Him who, thank the Lord!, "began the good work within [me], and will continue His work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns."(Philippians 1:6). I pray that you will too; you can't trust that you'll always know the right path, but you can always trust that He will.