Inconvenient.

I shared with you last month how I’ve been using my Illustrated Faith Praise Book to keep my sermon notes. I’ll admit that yesterday I pulled three bent up pages out of my purse and used all the tricks to flatten them out before adding them to my collection. The last month has been a whirlwind, and I’m behind on everything. Everything. I’ve had my days planned and thought out fairly well, and then one thing after another piles on, and I’m left with two weeks worth of laundry and a pile of dirty paper plates beside a full sink. I’d like to tell you it’s all been out of my control, but that’s not entirely true. Most of my delay has been brought on by my own choices, and it’s actually amazing. Let me be clear, I haven’t been covered up by circumstance, not really. We haven’t been bombarded with too much change, not exactly. The wrench in my perfectly planned out life? People.

When we started feeling those first tinglings of a move on the horizon last year, we sought the Lord hard about the whys and whens and whats-up-with-thats. It felt counterproductive, to yank us from a thriving church where we were lined up to be a vital part of the future. I couldn’t understand the timing, and I certainly had questions about the realities for my kids. In short, I would describe the idea as entirely inconvenient. The Lord was working something special in my heart on the area of flexibility and inconvenience. Over the last year we had in Texas, I grew exponentially in my friendships. This wasn’t because all of my friends became more awesome overnight. It was because I tossed my conventional wisdom out the window and grabbed hold of their necks instead. I spent less time worrying about squeaky clean baseboards and perfectly plump throw pillows, and more time inviting them into my craziness for coffee. What was once “entirely inconvenient” became such an important part of my everyday, availability.

In my jumbled pile of sermon notes, I found a page scribbled with notes about this very thing. We have recently entered a series about going all in, and the week in question was about Noah (Genesis 6:5-22.) These words hit me right in the gut and the reverb has been ringing in my spirit for weeks. “Anyone who God used in scripture had a high threshold for inconvenience.” I will be the first to admit that I haven’t always had what I would consider a high threshold for inconvenience. I’ve been known to freak out over lateness and long lines and unforeseen delays. But God is totally at work in those, my friends! He is present in the moments that feel like inconveniences if we just stop and give Him space to speak to us. Noah obviously embraced the inconvenience of the obedience that the ark required. He got past all the ways it wasn’t glamorous and opened his eyes to the real deal. People. I believe I could change this life-altering quote and it would suit my current situation just fine. All who God used in scripture had a huge threshold for people. It’s a beautiful thing, to stop seeing God’s kids as inconveniences, and start seeing them as the only thing that really matters in this life.

Happy Sunday, my loves.

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