Category Archives: Patience

Guest Post: Whiplash

Do Something, dreams, Faithful, Guest Post, Patience, Prayer

I only had the privilege of living with Jen in college for a year, but that year was one of transformation and change and following God’s will for both of us.  After our senior year, Jen went on to Princeton, where she competed seminary and has since been working at a church in North Carolina.  I have always admired Jen’s way of looking at life, and have appreciated the conversations we’ve had since leaving college.  It is a privilege to invite Jen to share on the blog today.  

By Jen Christianson

Sometimes my life as a minister gives me whiplash.

Today, I spent the afternoon in a retreat to close our summer internship program, celebrating a summer of grace and growth, and grieving the end and the necessary goodbyes.

Immediately after, I drove to the nearest hospital to visit with a congregant in his eighties, who’d survived a tricky heart surgery. He has a long road of recovery ahead, but in so many ways it’s a fresh chapter: life snatched back from death.

The end of one chapter. The beginning of another.

There are too many days like this, sometimes. Too many funerals and baptisms in the same week.

At times, I find it easier (but never actually easy) to strike a balance, and then there are days I scarcely know what to do.

I had a lot of those days in Kenya.

I visited earlier this summer with a group from my church, seventeen other travelers on a ten-day trip to reconnect with friends and ministry partners in and around Nairobi.

For fourteen of us, it was our first time there. And so everything was jarring, everything new, everything a revelation.

And I had whiplash all over again.

Except it looked like this: laughing children next to open sewers in the middle of the slum. Students learning in broken down buildings without light, without air.

Joy next to suffering. Light in the darkest places. Abundant hospitality in villages that know only poverty.

How can it be? How does this happen?

I kept remembering the question from John 1, the incredulous tone: Can anything good come from Nazareth?

And the answer: come and see.

Come and see that even in the midst of great hardship, there is blessing. Come and see the people who laugh and sing even when their stomachs are empty. Come and listen to the friends that we met there, young men like Jeff.

Jeff lives in Mathare, Nairobi’s second-largest slum, giving shelter to half a million people in an area about half a square mile. He is an exception to many rules, not a statistic: he has not succumbed to drugs, alcohol, violence or gangs. He spends his time in a ministry that seeks out young people in the slums, to make sure they know the same path is open to them. He spends Friday nights in church.

But to walk the streets where Jeff grew up, to stand in the classroom he spent years in as a student, and to sit and hear him talk about a God who protects and provides for him is to be profoundly confused. At how this kind of faith can grow, well – here.

I felt that way. Until one night, in our group devotions, when a fellow traveler made this observation: “the people we’ve met,” she said, “have so little. But because of their faith, they have so much. We have so much, and yet, because of our faith…we really don’t have much at all.”

And then I realized: I want Jeff’s faith.

I want to cling tightly once more to the idea that God cares about me, and is at work, all the time, doing something good in my life. I want to sleep secure in the conviction that God protects and watches over me. I want to pray with confidence that I will be heard and answered – even if it’s in ways I didn’t ask for or don’t understand.

I want to walk with intention again, the life of a disciple. To be guided by faith. To follow wherever God leads.

And I’m learning that God often leads straight into a whole lot of whiplash, that messy pairing together of things that just don’t go, that don’t make sense.

A savior who comes to a peasant girl in a stable. A Lord who eats with criminals and lepers and prostitutes. Life out of death. Hope out of despair. Light out of darkness.

The life of a disciple, I think, means witnessing to this kind of illogical, confusing, astonishing, grace and power. It means standing in the middle of these contradictions and proclaiming “yes” to all of them. Yes, God is in these both; yes, something good can come out of Nazareth.

It means remembering that the God who made us all will make it all well, bring it all together, in the end.

Thanks be to God.

Headlights

Live Like Jesus, Patience, Prayer, Waiting

By Kristen Entwistle

I was driving home late last night, down one of those two lane country roads in Indiana.  Turns out, there’s a lot of those roads, and I’m pretty unfamiliar with them right now.  You see, I just moved here, and I’m still learning my way around.  I don’t know which roads twist and turn or which ones are likely to have horses and buggies on them.  I don’t know which ones have stop signs every half mile, and which ones go on forever.

Most of these roads have a ditch on either side of them and people who drive like maniacs.  Oh, and people who blind you with their high beams.

As I was driving down that two lane road last night, it was a little scary – not being able to see more than a hundred feet in front of you and not knowing what’s up ahead.

It’s kind of like life, isn’t it?  God gives us these glimpses of what He is calling us to do, these rare moments of certainty where we can see a hundred feet in front of us.  But we can’t see what’s coming.  We can’t see that there’s a sharp turn or a stop sign up ahead.  That cancer is going to hit us seemingly out of nowhere or that a close friend is going to die unexpectedly.  But we can’t see the good things too – the new baby, the extra money that just showed up in the budget – all we can see is what God illuminates before us.

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Occasionally we get a glimpse of what’s coming when there’s a house light on, or a gas station.  But not very often.  Most of the time we’re still in the dark, with only our headlights.

Walking in faith isn’t easy, and it’s certainly not without its difficulties.  But we’ve got a God who can see all the twists and turns and stop signs because He built the road.  He knows what lies ahead for us and He guides us through it.

We may end up in the ditch sometimes, or make a wrong turn, but still He shows us the way, one step at a time.

Fifteen Minutes

Faithful, Patience, Prayer, , , ,

By Kristen Entwistle

I was a distance swimmer in college.  The 1000 yard and 1650 yard (the mile) races were my favorite.

I think what I loved about it was that for ten or fifteen minutes, no one expected me to do anything but swim. 

Out of the water, every fifteen minutes was full of chaos and expectations and multi-tasking.  I was expected to have an answer for everything – what assignment was due tomorrow for any class, what lab the general chemistry students were doing this week, how my doctors were handling my latest illness, what songs we were singing at church this week, when choir was performing at church, when our next swim meet was, how much time I needed to drop to make the cut for any event…

But for those precious minutes in the water, all I had to do was swim.

Even now, when my life feels overwhelming, and the change is impending, and my to-do list is a mile and a half long, I wish for those fifteen minutes again. 

And I realize that I don’t only want those fifteen minutes – I need them.

I need that time to rest in God and in His promises.  I need that time to recharge, reset, and renew.

It’s not much, but it is enough for today.  Tomorrow, I’ll need it again.  Fifteen minutes.

rest

When I Don’t Know The Answer

Patience, Prayer, Testimony

By Kristen Entwistle

I was sitting on a bench outside today, waiting for a friend.  While I was waiting, a man came over to me and asked if I could take a few photos for him.  I was happy to oblige, and after taking the pictures for him, I went to sit back down, and he sat down too.  He looked at me and asked, “I have to ask, are you married?”

Slightly taken aback, I answered, “No, I’m not.”

“Beautiful girl like you, how is it that you’re not married?”

I have a million answers to that question, but I simply answered, “I’m just not.”

If it hasn’t become clear to you yet, this guy was looking for something other than just a polite conversation.  After a few more questions, when he asked me for my phone number, I politely declined and he decided I wasn’t worth his time anymore, walking away.

This guy’s not the first one to ask me why I’m not married.  Nor will he be the last.  Truth is, many of my friends are married, having children, and moving forward with their lives.  Truth is, I haven’t ever had a date for a plus-one at a wedding, and that makes weddings…well, lonely.  Truth is, I haven’t been on a vacation this summer because I don’t want to go somewhere by myself.  Truth is, I’m feeling a little like a seventh wheel in my family right now, and a lot like a failure.

Truth is, I don’t really know the answer to that question.

I can come up with plenty of reasons why I think I’m still single.  Most of them I’ve heard from ex-boyfriends before.  No one wants to deal with your disease.  You’re not pretty enough for someone.  You’re too fat, too needy, too independent, too headstrong.  No one actually thinks you’re worth their time.  You’ve got too much baggage – no one wants that.  You’re not smart enough.  You’re not enough for any guy to care about you.  

But the truth is, although I may have it in my head that what I want is best, God’s will is better.  And right now, His will is not what I expected, but it is where I am.  And as hard as it may be sometimes, I have to find a way to be okay with where God has me right now.

So I pour into those around me, and do my best to be a blessing to them.  And in turn, they have been a blessing to me.

I may not have a good answer to that question, but I do know that God’s not finished with me yet.  His plan is infinitely better than anything I could ever dream.  And whatever that means for the future, I know that He is good, and His love endures forever.

Praying In The Waiting Room

Patience, Prayer, Waiting

By Kristen Entwistle

When I sit in doctor’s offices, waiting (which is fairly often if you’re me), I tend to people-watch. Most of the time, there’s the mom with two kids who she has to take back with her, even though it’s her appointment. She looks frazzled and a little overwhelmed as they lead her back to the room. There’s the teenager who’s here with her mom, and her mom is trying to micromanage everything she writes on the sheet the receptionist hands her. The daughter gets frustrated (I can do it myself!), and quits talking to her mom, finishing the paperwork with a scowl on her face. There’s the older couple in the corner, with the man nodding off while his wife reads a magazine. The receptionists continue clacking away on their keyboards. Then a man walks in, sits down, a look of fear in his eyes. He’s expecting bad news, it seems. A pregnant woman walks in alone, no ring on her finger. I wonder what has brought her here today – herself or her baby.

I’ve spent a significant portion of my life in doctor’s offices, waiting. Perhaps not so patiently, but waiting nonetheless. And I’ve spent much time watching.

And yet I cannot physically help any of these people.

I cannot take away their diabetes or asthma or pain. But I want to, so badly, to tell them that it doesn’t have to be terrible. That good can come from these ‘bad’ things. I’ve seen it.

But the only way that happens is with God.

And so, as I sit here waiting, I pray for these people – sitting here, waiting with me. I pray that if they don’t know Christ, that someone will come into their path to tell them about the love that He has for them. I pray that if they do know Christ, that they would lean on Him in the tough times and the good times, and that they would be a light to those they come in contact with, even in this office today.

And I pray the same for you, even though you aren’t in this office right now.

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)

Amen.