Faith in His Plan

As my and your friend from SEED, Ruthie, and I sat in the Atlanta Airport for 46 hours trying to get home from our spring break mission trip, we wondered how this struggle of dashed hopes and confusion would affect the memories of our trip. We had just experienced the most amazing week of serving and being served by the community of Harmons, Jamaica. Would we dwell on the torments of a two day layover? Would we curse Delta Airlines, the funny little man who kept giving us misinformation, or the whole city of Atlanta?

Each evening of the trip, all 26 participants would sit in a circle for a time for reflection. The final evening, the reflections were dominated by questions of whether or not we could really take the lessons we learned back to our normal lives. I know I’ve previously felt similar spiritual ‘highs’ after a great retreat or trip. They always seemed to fade to some degree though when faced with entrance back into a lukewarm Christian American society. This might have been the case, given my travel woes, had I not received the most inspiring faith I’ve heard in a long time on this very trip.

A family, who is very dear to me, experienced great tragedy last fall, the sort of tragedy that brings huge life plans crashing down. This tragedy brought a university and community to their knees. I tend to shy away from emotional issues, and this was no exception. I praised God when two sisters from this family decided to go on the trip, and I finally summoned the courage to talk to them about some things I had been curious about. I was amazed at their faith. They openly admitted they would not have been on this trip had it not been for the events of last fall. In the wake of terrible misfortune, they weren’t cursing and saying, ‘why me?’ They had faith in God’s plan for them.

As I sat in the airport, I knew this was God’s plan – to see if my friend and I could persevere through this inconvenience without yelling at the ticket agents and forgetting all we had learned, to see if we could still come back strong after a reality check, to see if we had faith in His plan.