Big Dreams, and Higher Thoughts

The last night that I was working, I took my break around 3:00 AM. My feet and my eyes were heavy with weariness, and my heart was heavy with other things. Desperate for help from the Lord, and blinking back the tears, I went to my favorite break spot, pulled a bench over to the window, propped my sock feet up on the heater, and sat looking into the darkness and crying out to the Lord. I was not only tired, but resentful, thinking my yoke very hard and rebelling against the means that the Lord was using to answer one of my prayers.

And, as He always does in His grace, the Lord began reminding me of Himself. Reassuring me of His love, reminding me of His faithfulness, reinforcing His presence with me. The verse came to mind, “"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

It was as though the Lord began saying, “My thoughts and plans for you are so much bigger than yours. You can hardly grasp the beginning of what I want to do with your life. Rachel, I am working to glorify Myself in your life! Think of it! To bring glory to the eternal God, the creator of the universe, by means of your humdrum, puny life!

“You wish your life was different—how do you want it to be? You want to bid goodbye to loneliness, to have the people you enjoy always with you. That is a big want. But I want something bigger for you; I want you to enjoy the only Friend that actually can be with you in every moment. You want to enjoy the love of family and friends. Rachel, I am offering you the love of God! I will not have you settle for less than the boundless, incomprehensible love of Christ!

“What is that? You wish your life was easier? That you were more free to do the things that are important to you? If you could only realize the privilege that it is to be doing the things that are important to Me! There is a reason you are here right now, Rachel. A reason you are living where you are, doing the daily chores that you are, bearing the responsibilities that you are. There is a reason you are working at this hospital, working this night shift. That reason is nothing less than My will—the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. I know your dreams don’t involve these things. But My will does.

“You have two big dreams. To be a wife and mom, and, if that doesn’t work out, to be a flight nurse. My will may encompass those things for you, but it goes far, far beyond. My will for you began before the foundations of the world, and it extends into eternity, long after this world has passed away. You are to do a work even nobler than that of a helpmeet, more magnificent and important than saving lives in a helicopter thousands of feet above the ground. That work is to accomplish my will. To follow in the steps of My Son, Who said, ‘I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given me to do.’ (John 17:4) And right now accomplishing My will means doing dishes and washing laundry and trying to figure out what to cook and working night shifts. It’s big stuff, Rachel. It’s the work which I have given you to do.”

I sat there in the quiet hospital and felt humbled and awed. Humbled because of my petty unbelief and self-will. Awed to know that my sitting alone on a bench in the night, was, to the God of heaven, a distinct event in eternity, a moment for Him to reveal Himself, even if only to one heart. And to daily life I now carry the thought, “The object of my life is not to carry a yoke that I love, but to love the yoke I carry, because the Lover of my soul has laid it on me.” How glad I am that the yoke was not removed while I moaned about it, because now I have the chance to learn to sing beneath it, and to gladden the heart of God by my song.