Our Life in Boxes (en/fr)
- Feb 13, 2019
- 7 min read
**Je n'ai pas tout traduit en français, mais il y a au moins un sujet de prière écrit par David. J'espère pouvoir écrire plus en français dans l'avenir -- cela serait un bon défi pour moi !
Without God, we work in vain.
Apart from God, we serve in vain.
Forgetting God, we worry in vain.
Putting ourselves before God, we live in vain.
All is vanity.
BUT, with God, we build for eternity.
With God.
"Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain"
Psalm 127
"Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities !
All is vanity."
Ecclesiastes 1
I have recently been struck by these potentially damning and daunting passages of Scripture. It is true that no matter how much good work we do, how many beautiful things we create, how many lives we touch, and how much energy we spend serving others, all that we do is vanity if we are not doing it with God. Our efforts may lead to temporary relief for others, a feeling of contentment and satisfaction for ourselves, maybe even positive change that affects generations to come, but without the Lord we are unable to change lives for eternity. This life is short, like a passing shadow. Our goal must be bigger than this life. Our vision needs to go beyond the changes we can make in this temporary, physical world.
Let us work with eternity on our minds (see video below).
This is our prayer and the goal for our family as we move into what's coming next. Once in Minnesota, it would be easy for us to find things to DO, opportunities to serve, a job where Elise could be the "most effective" for the Kingdom, etc. etc. We humans are generally good at finding "meaningful activities" to do. But we don't want to simply do what is meaningful from a human perspective. We want to walk in the plans that God has for us, serve where He wants us to serve, and take the opportunities that He gives us. We want to build for eternity.
Transitions are often exciting, refreshing, nerve-racking, painful and inspiring all at once. It is hard to know exactly where to put your focus, as it is necessary to close one chapter but also to prepare for the next. Somewhere in the Middle is often a hard place to navigate.
I had a couple stress-out days last week. I felt the need to DO something but I didn’t know exactly what to do. I wanted to be productive, but how ? Most of our work activities in Québec have come to an end, we have already packed many boxes with our possessions and are left with only what is necessary for life until we leave, and there is little more that we can do here to prepare for our time in Minnesota. For two days I fought an internal tension and feeling of discontent, leaving my poor husband and son with a frustrated and easily annoyed wife and mother.
And then the Lord spoke to me through His Word, through my husband and through the soft sweet voice of His Spirit. It is really true that there is a season and time for everything under the sun (Ecclesiastes 3), and in our current season God has given our family a couple weeks of rest and calm before the craziness of an international move. We see this time as a gift, not meant for us to hurry up and DO a million things before leaving Quebec in order to really “make use of” our days…but to take the necessary time to prepare ourselves emotionally, physically and spiritually for the next period of our lives, and to have good, quality moments with those we love here before we leave. In light of eternity, our greatest tools in preparing for this transition are not DOING, planning and searching, but rather plunging into Scripture, praying and abiding in Christ.
As soon as I understood this, I felt peace fall over me. Tension and stress lifted from my shoulders and mind, and I had complete contentment knowing that we are exactly where we should be, doing what we should do, BEING who we should be. It's usually necessary to give up our own agenda and plans in order to discover what God is up to, and by His grace I was able to move past my own ideas and see our situation from His perspective.
Thank you God.
So yes, we are in transition, we are closing the current Canadian chapter, we are finishing up our activities, we are saying our goodbyes, and -as the title of this post so rightly puts it - our life is now in boxes. 52 banana boxes, to be precise, waiting patiently in the basement to be loaded into a trailer and trucked off to the USA.
These days are full of "lasts":
last performance at La P'tite Cuillère,
last time leading worship at the Baptist church,
last time leading worship at our previous church,
last suppers with friends,
last day at Jude's daycare,
last Alpha course in the prison,
last Tribu Enflammée family day.
We thank God for helping us to live these moments with grace. We move through them with a blend of different emotions, although it hasn't fully hit us that we are leaving. We expect that to come later.
We continue to ask for and appreciate your prayers in this transition. They are so precious and important for us. Here are a few prayer requests:
Please continue to pray that we are able to finish well here in Quebec, leaving no "loose ends," but rather exiting this country in peace and assurance, knowing that we have followed God's direction and finished the work He brought us here to do.
Elise has begun applying for nursing jobs in MN, but has not had any positive replies. Please pray that God would lead her to the job that He wants her to fill !
Jude's eczema comes and goes, and we are still not sure what is/are the cause(s). Please pray for wisdom and
One of our most urgent prayer requests is our passage at the Canada-USA border on February 25th. This prayer request comes with a bit of an explanation, so bear with me:
David is in the middle of applying to Century College in MN, but there are certain steps that he must complete once in the state. Therefore, he has not yet been accepted to the school and has thus not been able to apply for his student visa. We have thought a lot about how we can clearly explain to the border patrol officers what could seem like a rather suspicious story -- that YES we are moving with a trailer full of our belongings, but not really in David's case seeing as he does not yet have the required papers to MOVE to the United States (his ESTA allows him to visit the country for three months).
We have considered many different solutions, and Elise recently called border patrol to explain our situation and ask if anything else needed to be done (we were told that we have all that we need, but that they could not guarantee smooth sailing at our port of entry), but something else has been growing in our hearts the past couple of weeks:
We believe that God sent us to Quebec two years ago, and that He is now moving us on to the USA, and we have decided to put our lives in His hands and to trust Him. Now that a potential barrier is before us, our natural tendency would be to try and find our own solutions, while we feel that what we should do is trust God who guides all things. This reminds us of the story of Abraham. He trusted the Lord when he left his home country to go where God was leading, but when he arrived in Egypt he panicked and found his own solution to save his life by pretending that his wife was his sister. But if God sent Abraham to Egypt, wouldn't He protect him in order to accomplish His plan ?
We feel that we are facing a similar situation where we could either look for our own solutions to the problem, or we can choose to trust the Lord no matter the outcome. We have done what we can to ensure that all goes well, and now we are moving forward in faith that the matter is in our Father's hands and He has the best plan for us. We would appreciate your prayers that we are able to guard our confidence and faith.
Thank you !
Sujet de prière, écrit en Français par David:
Un des sujets qui occupent nos prières ces derniers temps est le passage de la frontière canado-américaine le 26 février prochain. David est en plein processus d'inscription pour son école depuis novembre passé, mais rien n'a encore abouti. Du coup sans inscription, nous ne sommes pas en mesure de commencer les démarches pour un visa d'étudiant à ce jour. Nous avons réfléchi au passage de frontière, comment expliquer au douanier que "oui nous déménageons avec toutes nos affaires, mais pas vraiment en ce qui concerne David puisqu'il n'a pas les papiers requis" ! On a alors envisagé plein de solutions, genre David passe la frontière à pieds ou il vol sur Minneapolis alors qu'Elise rentre en voiture (ce qui serait tout a fait possible avec l'ESTA de David). Mais quelque chose d'autre a grandi dans nos cœurs, une nouvelle pensée :
Nous avons décidé de mettre nos vies dans les mains de Christ et de lui faire confiance. Nous croyons qu'il nous a envoyé au Canada puis aux USA et lui avons fait confiance. Maintenant qu'une potentielle barrière se présente devants nous, notre tendance naturelle serait de trouver plein de solutions alors que nous sentons que nous devons faire confiance à Dieu qui dirige toutes choses. Cela nous a rappelé aussi l'histoire d'Abraham. Il a fait confiance à Dieu pour quitter son pays pour aller là où Dieu l'emmenait, mais lorsqu'il s'est retrouvé en Egypte il a paniqué et a cherché sa propre solution pour sauver sa vie à savoir prétendre que sa femme était sa sœur. Mais si Dieu avait envoyé Abraham en Egypte, n'allait-il pas le protéger afin d'accomplir son plan ?
Nous avons donc l'impression de nous retrouver dans cette même situation, soit rechercher par nos propres moyens une solution à l'obstacle qui se présente devant nous, soit faire confiance à Dieu quelqu'en soit l'issue. Nous avons choisi de marcher par la foi dans la seconde voie toutes faisant notre possible pour se préparer de façon responsable, et nous serions reconnaissant que vous nous accompagnez dans la prière. Pour que nous gardions confiance, foi et courage.
Merci !
Comments