When God Steps in Our Story

God has a way of intersecting into our lives in the most unique ways.

As I leaned back and forth, moving my legs in a similar motion, this helped to create the momentum I needed to get myself higher into the air. As I tipped back on the swing, I'd often look into the sky, imagining what it would be like if I could just take off and fly. The sky looked so peaceful as clouds appeared to be swiftly floating by. I didn't yet know that the earth below me was moving at 67,000 miles an hour, only held in place by the same gravitational pull that kept me from flying into the air.  

Regardless, there was always that fluttering that danced in my stomach each time I felt as though I was about to take off into the sky to be swept away, only to descend again into the pendulum rhythm I was in control of. If I wanted to go faster or higher, I had only to lean back and pump my legs harder. There wasn't much I needed to worry about during this brief escape from reality. 

But I desperately wanted there to be something more. 

I knew God to be some higher power and the only answer one could give to the complexity of questions regarding the unknown world, some entity that never interacted with us, especially on a personal level. Just as I was unaware of the gravitational pull keeping me on earth, I was unaware of the path God had already set in my life. 

My mom worked a full-time job while trying to raise two girls on her own was no simple task. Her cousin told her about a children’s program that we could join at the local church and each week my sister and I would get picked up in a school bus to go to church on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings.

We began learning various stories in the Bible and sang silly songs with the chorus “I just want to be a sheep, baa baa baa” while making hand gestures and motions. Not understanding the meaning of the songs, I still sang along. What was a Pharisee, and why would I want to be like them?? What’s so special about a sheep?

Over the course of the next few weeks and months, I grew in my knowledge of Bible stories and ultimately learning that Jesus came to die for our sins. All the stories were fascinating. Watching videos of talking vegetables acting out the various Bible stories was entertaining too. But as far as I was concerned, that’s all this was - stories.

Little did I know then that the Bible stories taught were just small glimpse into a greater reality that would later unfold in my life.

Psalm 139:16 “Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.”

Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.”

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans
    I have for you, “declares the Lord,
plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
    plans to give you a hope and a future.”