God of My Tomorrows

When I accepted Christ in 1991, I was the only Christian in the family and I struggled to even keep the faith. Yet I wanted to do BIG things for God – to serve, to lead, to do mission work!

The everyday reality, however, was that after teaching and completing my administrative tasks, I had only enough energy to tend to my own young children. My life was divided between my students and my children and it did not seem as if there was any more that I could fit in. Daily quiet times were mostly 10 minutes before the children awoke in the morning and I had to get ready to go to school myself.

When I first read the paean of the Proverbs 31 woman, I decided that God made some women Super Women and the rest, Just Plain Ordinary. And I knew which category I belonged to. I could barely keep things together and just reading the list of tasks this accomplished woman managed to do exhausted me. Make bed coverings? Please. I was prepared to pass up on all the accolades. It was okay if my children did not rise up and call me blessed, so long as they rose up and went to school. The unnamed woman of Proverbs 31 made me feel inadequate.

Yet one line stayed with me - “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” (Prov 31:25)

This was the one quality I envied. To be able to ‘laugh at the time to come’. How does one do that? In the days ahead of me were school exams, an incomplete post-graduate degree, a strained marriage, paycheck to paycheck budgeting. I didn’t think I could serve God, let alone laugh at the future.

A shift in my understanding came when the pastor of the church I was attending at that time introduced the congregation to the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. This connected deeply with me because as a Literature teacher, I had taught the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest. Suddenly, a favourite poem, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” made deeper sense to me.

“… the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.”

There was no special work that God blesses, no special work that meant I was “serving God”. 

In God’s eyes, I was Christ! All I was called to do was “keep all my goings graces” – my teaching, my interactions with my students, my parenting, my daily chores. Scrubbing stains, reading to my children, correcting my students’ essays, invigilating exams ... All my “goings”, “to see God in all things”, doing whatever I was doing each day of my life.

In waiting to be called to do “big things” for Jesus, I had neglected to notice that many women who had an encounter with God were just going about their daily life, doing what their roles called them to do that day. The Samaritan woman was just going about her daily chores (albeit at an unusual hour) of drawing water for her household. Then she met Jesus. Lydia was meeting with other women at a riverside (Acts 16: 13 – 15). Then she met Paul and came to know God. Just every day happenings, but God moments.

At that season of my life, when I was longing for grand plans, God had called me to serve Him by serving my family, my friends, my students. Serving small. There came a time when I could do more – teach Sunday School, lead worship, edit the church newsletter, and later after I moved to SJSM, to mentor young adults, to write, to facilitate the ‘Search for Life’ course. Recently, I started a book club with some women; we meet once a month and we share our lives. But I did not do all those things at the same time. As the seasons of my life changed, the tide of service ebbed and flowed.

There were some months when I could not “do” and just had to “be”, when I just needed to tend to myself – to be the hurt traveller by the road and be ministered to by the Good Samaritan. Then in other seasons, I obeyed God when He said “to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Cor 1:3-4)”.  I learnt through the years, that “Christ plays in ten thousand places / Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his”.

Twenty three years later, my family has changed. A 30-year marriage ended. Babies grew up and became brides. There are still tomorrows ahead of me that I wonder about. Work and parenting that defined so much of who I was have changed. But my God has not changed. He is still the One who taught me that Peter walked on water only when he kept his eyes on Jesus. The One who bends down to listen to me (Ps 116:2) while I tell Him my fears, my wrongs, my dreams, my hopes and cry my tears. The One who keeps account of my tears, erases my slate clean and gives me a new morning every day.

I have learnt how one laughs at the future. It is by doing the one thing I can do now, for one person, today, in the name of Christ. It is by trusting the God of my yesterdays with my today, and my tomorrows. I've made my peace with the Proverbs 31 woman :)