My 29th birthday

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases

His mercies never come to an end

They are new every morning, new every morning

Great is your faithfulness

This song has felt like my anthem since first year at BSSM. My own personal song. Almost like I travelled back in time to the destruction of Jerusalem, just so that I could add a little hope into the story. Or maybe the poet travelled forward in time in the middle of his lamenting and saw the evidence of God’s faithfulness as I have seen it.

Or maybe God just is faithful. Maybe the same eternal being who showed his nature in the middle of tragedy in Jerusalem also shows his nature in the favour on my life. I know I sure didn’t earn it. It does after all make sense that the faithful one would be faithful in his faithfulness.

That was a phrase God gave me when I was preparing for my BSSM first year missions trip. I thought it was a prophetic word for someone else, which, it turns out it was. Yet he carries life everywhere he goes and it turns out it was also for me. The anthem of my life in Redding. The anthem of my life before, I just didn’t really see it. I suspect now that I know to look, the threads will continue throughout the fabric of my future, woven in so that you have to really look to notice. Woven in with his love, his kindness, his patience, so many other aspects of his nature in which he has been faithful. And there it is again.

I am 29 today. Well tomorrow, but also today. Part of the fun of living in a country a day behind. Twenty-nine years of life, and I look around, and I know I’m not where I am because I deserve it. I know the people in my life are not there because I sought them out or was particularly clever in the way I handled my interactions with them. It’s his faithfulness. My pastor loves to say, “God works all things together for the good of those who love him, so if it’s not good, it’s not the end.” Well I’m not at the end, at least I hope not, yet I cannot think of a single thing I’ve gone through he has missed the mark in. The better I get to know him, the more aware I become of how integral this is to who he is. Maybe you’re not at the “good” end of the story yet, maybe there are some things this doesn’t feel so true in, but I can promise you, I know that I know that I know it’s what he does. It’s like he can’t help himself.

It’s like something I remember from one of our teachers in first year, who was describing the artistry of God, that when bad things happen, things not in his will, He’ll craft something so beautiful out of them that it’ll look like they were part of the plan all along. It’s what he does. And you can look on and think he meant for it to happen because he does such a beautiful job of redeeming it. And he’s okay with you misunderstanding, and blaming him. He lets you hurl your disbelief, your mistrust, your blame, your pain, your verbal abuse at him - I speak from experience - and you know how he responds? He pulls you in closer, he lets you turn that knife in his chest and embraces you with a kindness that so contradicts your accusations, you just can’t stay mad. He never lets go.

So looking back on my life there are so many things and people I am grateful for, so many aspects of who God is that I’m grateful to have experienced, but if there were one thing I valued more than all of it, that I couldn’t live without, it would be his faithfulness.