Silence

I’ve been pretty silent here over the past few months since we returned from the States.  I guess I’ve been in a weird place… a place where I don’t feel like I have much to say.  A place of busyness.  A place of much change.  A place of increased responsibilities (which glaringly show me my inadequacies.)  I haven’t had much motivation to sit down and write up a blog post.  And even though there have been plenty of times I should have written (I am a missionary after all and communication is expected) I just couldn’t get myself to actually do it. 

This place of silence has not necessarily been a bad thing.  I think we all go through times where we don’t feel like talking or don’t have much to say.  Times where the Lord is asking us to be silent.  Times where words just don’t cut it so it’s better not to say anything.

I don’t want to be silent any more. 

The Pastor at church today preached from Ecclesiastes 11-12.  Although I feel my Creole has really improved in the past year, I won’t pretend that I understood all that he had to say from this portion of God’s Word.  I still have a long way to go!  That being said, I read much of the context while he was preaching and came across a verse I hadn’t noticed before and it spoke to my soul.

“As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.”  Ecclesiastes 11:5 

I just love this!  How does God place a person’s soul in their body while she is in her mother’s womb?  I can’t even fathom it.  Yet that is the way God works in everything, in every circumstance.  I sat there in awe thinking about it.

I love the book of Ecclesiastes.  It’s one of those books that I have enjoyed reading from beginning to end at one sitting from time to time in my adult life. It’s such a poetic book, yet laid out so matter of fact and rationally.  Those of you who know me well… well, let’s say that’s just how God made me.  And if you’ve never read it from beginning to end in one sitting, I challenge you to do it. 

For what purpose is there to this life?  It is to just be busy, to work hard, to enjoy life or to suffer? 

“The end of the matter; all has been heard.  Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”  Ecclesiastes 12:13

It’s all meaningless without a Savior.

Over 2000 years ago, Father God placed the soul of his Son, Jesus  in his mother Mary’s womb and fulfilled the long-awaited promise of a Savior.  Fully God, fully man, this tiny baby was the hope of the world.  So many didn’t understand how God was working, yet he was fulfilling his perfect plan.

Salvation had come. 

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  Luke 2:11

Jesus makes this life worth living.  Jesus gives it purpose. And I can no longer be silent.  For just as the writer of Ecclesiastes can’t know just how God brings the soul to the body, I can’t even begin to understand all the ways God is working in my life, in my family, in this ministry, in this country, in my passport country, and in the world to fulfill his perfect plan.

~Becky