If you've never experienced them, college applications are an extremely stressful process. It's not so much the deadlines or the essays or all the times you have to shout to your parents, "Wait, where did you go to college?" It's the money. Sitting down with your dad to add up the tuition, fees, room and board of all the schools you want to go to is not exactly encouraging. "You can totally go to this school, Kendall! You just need to earn $3,000 this summer, okay?"
Yeah. Not so happy...until I realize that my God is so much bigger than tuition. Something that may seem far too large to overcome is absolutely nothing to Him. While I sit around fretting that I'll have to go to my second-choice school, He gently whispers, "Have you forgotten who I AM?" Even if I do end up going to my second-choice school, I have every confidence that I will be attending His first choice. When we are in hot pursuit of the Almighty, He doesn't decide to give us second-best.
The God who calmed the waves and conquered death and keeps this entire world in motion is bigger than any circumstances. Paul said that neither death nor life, angels nor demons, the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of Christ. If Paul were alive today, I don't think I'd have the courage to walk up to him and say, "Um, you forgot one teensy-little thing. I think it's too big for God."
"And what's that?"
"Er...college tuition. I mean, you guys didn't really have college back when you wrote that... So I would totally understand if that just didn't cross your mind."
Paul was a fun-loving, sarcastic man, so at this point he would probably be laughing at me. I don't think I'd be willing to do that.
Amy Carmichael wrote, "If I cannot catch 'the sound of noise of rain' long before the rain falls, and, going to some hilltop of the spirit, as near to my God as I can, have not faith to wait there with my face between my knees, though six times or sixty times I am told 'there is nothing,' til at last 'there arises a little cloud out of the sea,' then I know nothing of Calvary love."
Our God will come through for us. Perhaps not in the way we expect. And certainly not if we're running as fast as we can in the opposite direction. But if we have the faith to trust Him, and praise Him for the rain even before it falls, there is no length He will not go to in order to bring His perfect will to pass. Let us wait patiently on our God to answer our prayers, in His own time, in His own way; and let us not cease to pray until He answers. Let us look at our circumstances and smile, remembering a God who brought three men out of a fiery furnace not only burn-free, but without the smell of smoke hanging upon them.
"The heart set to do the Father's will need never fear defeat." ~Elisabeth Elliot
