From the moment I got to Italy, I knew that I would have to find some sort of a job this summer. When you're living completely off of savings and watching that savings diminish daily, you realize quickly that your supply of savings isn't going to last forever. So, I started to think of some options. Summer jobs are hard to get, no matter what, but this particular summer presents even more issues. Usually people aren't very quick to hire someone who will only be around for three months, but for me, I am only able to work for May and June of this summer because of the wedding in July. So, I knew it would be a challenge to land a job at all. I had planned on trying to work for a catering company in ABQ that I worked at in high school. I figured that the summer is high season for weddings and other special events so it would make sense that they could afford to hire a few extra people just for the summer season. As the time got closer to when I would need to start making that happen, I became discouraged. The major reason that I decided to stop working there when I worked there in the first place was because of the strange hours. I used to work weekends and when I would work it would be from about 3 PM to 2 AM. This made me start to second guess if I really should be working this summer.
At this point, I turned to God basically asking for some sort of indication that I should or shouldn't work this summer. Then, all of the sudden opportunities started popping up, which of course, led me to believe I should work this summer. Then all of the sudden these opportunities fell short for one reason or another. This put me in a really strange position of really not knowing what to do-- keep pursuing jobs or let it go. They say that as soon as you stop looking (whether it be looking for someone to date, looking for the keys, etc.) that you'll find whatever you were looking for. And this is exactly what happened. A few days after I gave up on finding a job this summer and just settled for being really, really broke, a job offer came in that I couldn't refuse.
The moral of the story in all of this is that we are not always handed exactly what we ask for. They say that God has three answers every time we ask Him for something: yes, no, and I have something better in mind. In this case, the "I have something better in mind," happened to be a little lesson in persistence. It would have been very easy for me to give up after the first job didn't pan out and just to assume that it wasn't meant to be. But instead, I wanted to be really really sure that I wasn't supposed to work, if that was the case. I figured that if every opportunity that came by didn't work out for some reason, that would be a good indication to give up. But I think God wanted to see how long I'd keep fighting. Sometimes He wants to see if we will fight for the things that we want, and I think most of the time the things that mean the most to us will be worth fighting for. After all, if something's worth having it's worth fighting for, right?
This is just one of the many hidden lessons that God has taught me while I've been in Italy. It's been amazing to watch how He can teach me lessons in all sorts of unexpected ways.
Another lesson that I learned this past week was about the desire we have as humans to please others. It's human nature to want to please others and have others think you're a good person, fun to be around, etc. Whatever the case is, we spend a lot of our daily lives worried about the approval of others. At the surface level, there is no issue with this. The issue comes when we begin worrying more about what OTHERS think of us than what GOD thinks of us. At the end of the day, and at the end of our lives, it will be God who we stand in front of and have to explain ourselves to, not the people we live out our human existence with. We have to be very very careful of this very fine line. It's a daily challenge to focus on how God sees us and not be consumed with what others think.
"Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ." Galatians 1:10
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