Tales of the unexpected April 14, 2009

Another blog post, another waffle…

 

 

I realised just now that if you run up a set of stairs whilst still treading on every step, you really don’t make it up them a whole lot quicker than if you walk. Clearly to increase speed a multiple-steps-at-a-time approach is needed.

 

There’s no deep philosophical point to that by the way, and I’m not about to draw a theological parallel. I really was just running up the stairs!

 

It’s been an interesting week or so for this waffler. It was my birthday last Tuesday, and I’ll be honest it didn’t go quite the way I had imagined. I woke up feeling chirpy and went to work, taking American pancakes in for my colleagues in celebration of my continued existence on the planet. I felt pretty optimistic and was looking forward to the rest of the day. I returned home a few hours later completely shell-shocked from the news that my entire department will soon be made redundant.

 

Ouch.

 

It’s been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster since then. I mean, there are far worse things that could have happened. A job is just a job, and above all I know that God has my back and I don’t need to be afraid. Yet that sense of perspective seems to come and go with amazing rapidity!  I’ll be fine one minute, and the next I get this feeling of overwhelming anxiety. Just adjusting my mindset to job hunting is taking some doing. I don’t want to look for another job, I really like the one I have! But it’s not exactly optional. So I’m trying to pull myself together, or more accurately I’m asking God to pull me back together, and help me focus on what’s in front of me. I need to remember how he has looked after me in the past, and not doubt that he has my future under control.

 

“Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge.”    Psalm 16 v 1

75,000? Really? April 6, 2009

Approximately one year ago I put a video on YouTube. It was something I put together whilst volunteering with the youth ministry team at a church in Ohio. Some words and pictures to go along with a Misty Edwards song, to be used one week during communion to help the teenagers focus and reflect. I remember finding it harder than I thought I would. At the time I struggled to connect with the song for some reason…  weirdly it’s now one of my favourites. Anyway, I created a YouTube channel mainly for sharing a few vlogs with some friends and thought I may as well add this video too.

 

One year later and it has just passed 75,000 views.

 

And because YouTube doesn’t count multiple views from the same IP address, that means 75,000 different computers have viewed that video. That’s amazing! I mean… the video only exists because in a meeting of a few people in a church in Ohio it was decided that it would be a useful thing for one service, one week.

 

Now people all over the world have watched it. Amazing. The song (I Am Yours) is fantastic and I have no doubt at all that this is the reason it has been viewed so many times - the video is not that special! But just the idea that God can use that set of circumstances to bring that song to so many people and encourage them, when we thought it was just for one Sunday morning… (I’m going to sound all American, but I believe they do have the only phrase that fits here)… it blows my mind.

 

It reminds me how God can do whatever he wants with our little actions. They can have repercussions as big as he desires.  I find that incredibly encouraging. I so often feel that in the grand scheme of things and the big picture of this world, I am so small and insignificant… anything I do is just a whisper in a hurricane. And this is true. I am that small, and it is just a whisper. But God is the ultimate sound technician. So that whisper can do whatever he wants it to. It can go to one person or 75,000. Or 75,000000. The number doesn’t matter because that’s not what its about.

 

It’s about God and his glory. And he can and will use the little I’m able to do in whatever ways he chooses – big or tiny - to glorify his name. Brilliant!