Great is the Lord

Let those who delight in my righteousness shout for joy and be glad and say evermore,
“Great is the Lord, who delights in the welfare of His servant!”

Then my tongue shall tell of Your righteousness and Your praise all the day long.

This week is weird. My brain is stretched across two different countries, my body in a third. I’ve been saying a lot of goodbyes: to my job, my titles, my community, my friends, my family. It leaves me feeling a little stripped, a little unsure of how to define myself. I begin to realize all of the ways I have been propping my identity up, and now so many of those things are gone.

Instead I get the definitions of my Creator, but to be honest I have a hard time trusting Him sometimes. Yesterday this line in a hymn struck deep within my heart:

Thy mercy seat is open still,
Here let my soul retreat
With humble hope attend thy will,
And wait beneath thy feet

I was drawn to tears, less by the image of God’s great grace and more by my reluctance to wait and attend His will. As I lose other things I see increasingly the pride and selfishness that has yet to be carved away from me. My posturings and manipulations.

Yesterday, later in the day, one of the pins holding it together came crashing down. A small confusion of dates, a little mistake, but a stark, evident reminder that I am not perfect and never will be. Confirmation that in this crazy whirlwind of change I cannot manage everything on my own. I am not strong enough or smart enough to provide for myself in this season. As always, I am living on grace, but these days it feels like grace and grace alone. The grace of strangers, of friends, little images of God loving and guiding me through uncertainty and questions.

I went for a walk to try and settle myself, and when I came back there was another wall of grace, waiting for me. The problems resolved, answers to questions I didn’t even realize I was worried about underneath it all. As I cried tears of relief I could hear that quiet voice asking again,

“When will you learn to trust Me?”

When I feel so unsure about who I am or what I’m doing it’s easy to feel like everyone is waiting for me to fail. The cashier at the grocery store is waiting for me to fail when I don’t know the procedure for checking out. People are waiting for me to fail when I don’t accomplish the things I hope to. Mostly I’m waiting for myself to fail when I can’t be perfect all the time at everything, which I suppose is a pretty easy measure to fail at.

But the Lord, the great God of the universe, delights in my welfare! And those around me who have chosen to partake in my life shout for joy and are glad at this. In this very strange and lonely season I am not alone. I owe such a great debt of thanks to those who delight in my life and the paths God has taken me down. He provides for my welfare through so many of those individuals, and it’s a regular reflection of His love and grace for me.

Thank you so much for every prayer, for every cup of coffee, every free bed to sleep in, every kind note and e-mail and word of encouragement over the last couple of months. You are such tangible reminders that are slowly teaching me to trust in the God who delights in the welfare of His servants. He really is righteous and worthy of praise.

And if there is a way I can be a vehicle of your welfare in return, please let me know.