Yahweh Shows His Provision Through A Luggage Ticket

So I've recently come home from a teaching conference in Columbus, Ohio. It was very interesting and useful, but it lasted until almost 1:00 on Saturday. Check out time at most hotels is 11:00, and so we had to put our bags in this special room that the hotel has to hold luggage while we attended the rest of the conference.

In order to ensure the security of our bags, the hotel keeps the room locked and a person inside of it and gives us tickets to match the ones they put on our bags. We are supposed to show these tickets to the person inside the room so that they can give us our bags back.

So I get my tag and put it in my pocket and we go to breakfast and then to the rest of the conference. Now, everyone knows we should not put things in our pockets if they are important and we don't want to lose them. Why I forgot this, I couldn't say, but I noticed during the last session of the conference that morning that I had lost my luggage ticket.

This was slightly worrisome because the hotel had made it very clear that they did not return bags unless the luggage ticket was produced. Still, I had no idea where I had lost the ticket and the conference was held in a convention center that was bigger than the school in which I teach. It could've been anywhere! Not only that, but it could've been in the hotel itself, at the restaurant where we'd had breakfast, or on the street between the hotel and restaurant. There was no way I could, by diligently searching, hope to come upon this lost ticket.

Since this was so thoroughly out of my control, I didn't worry overlong. I reasoned that the hotel would have to give me my bags eventually and we'd have to figure something out. Since my two favorite shirts were in that bag, I certainly hoped so!

So the conference ended and my friends from the school I teach at and I were deciding on where to go get lunch before we picked up our bags and headed to the airport. We tried the food court in the hotel, and found some moderately decent fast-food type restaurants. The rest of downtown Columbus seemed too much to walk in the frigid weather, so we had to decide whether we wanted to eat in the food court or walk to the restaurant right across the street where we'd had breakfast.

The more we talked about it, the more we wanted to return to the restaurant where we'd eaten breakfast earlier that day. We still hadn't claimed our bags yet, so we didn't have to drag them around with us.

When we got to the restaurant, the lady who seated us decided to seat us in the exact same spot where we'd eaten breakfast. She sat us there even though there was another option because one of my friends was in a walking boot since she broke her foot earlier this school year. It was there, next to the booth where we'd eaten breakfast, that I found my luggage ticket!

Happily surprised, but somewhat wondering if this could possibly be my exact luggage ticket, I put the paper in my zipped up backpack front pocket (see, I learned) and ate lunch. After that, we went back to the hotel and claimed our bags.

I was even more glad I'd found the ticket when the hotel clerk made a big show of checking our tickets before returning our bags to us. I also found that the number on my ticket matched exactly the number on the other half of the ticket that was attached to my bag.

Yahweh provides! Whether or not I spent the whole morning worrying  about how I was going to get my luggage, He had that ticket there for me to find all along. In realizing that I had no control over finding that ticket, I saved myself hours worth of worrying and still found the ticket anyway.

Meanwhile, Yahweh proves Himself a faithful father once again, and I am thoroughly blessed.

The Seeing of the Unseen

Faith is the seeing of the unseen. Vision is the root word of "evidence" from Hebrews 11:1. Those who can see what isn't seen can make it manifest in substance.

Sometimes, it is hard to be the ones who see the unseen. It can feel like failure, like going backwards and re-walking a path over and over again. It is those days when you're feeling awful, like that dream of your heart is so far beyond your grasp, and you wonder why because you remember feeling better months before, remember holding and touching and feeling that very same dream and you're not quite sure how it slipped away.

How could it have slipped away unless you did something wrong, for a promise of Yahweh is never void, and He does not renege on what He has spoken.

But faith is the seeing of the unseen, and so the process requires a period of darkness after you've seen that dream of your heart. Sometimes, that period lasts a short time and sometimes it feels like it will never end, but the time period of unseen does not matter nearly so much as the promise itself.

Because it is during this time of not seeing that faith is made complete, that the promise that Yahweh gave you of that deepest desire of your heart is closer than ever to permanent manifestation. You are about to touch and hold and live in that dream and desire of your heart forever, for before it was a dream in your heart, it was first a dream in Yahweh's.

Your faith makes Yahweh's dreams come true.

I am full of faith right now, though I do not feel it. I feel very much on the edge of failure. I feel very alone and uncared for. I feel very sad and afraid. But I have seen and I remember.

I have seen a time when I did not wake up in dread of each day, fearful of messing up. There was a day when I knew that I could not break what Yahweh has established, when I realized that I was not going to mess anything up because Yahweh has already redeemed it. It's all His and in His hands anyway, and I do not have to carry this burden.

I have seen a time when I knew for certain that I was not broken. No longer am I lacking anything. Yahweh has made me whole. I don't have to fight myself or fear my feelings anymore. I am not at fault for anything that is happening in or around me. Yes, there will be times when Yahweh corrects me, and when He does it is not with blame or guilt, but with gentleness and care.

I have seen a time when I had a home in my Father. When there was someone to take care of me, to protect me from everything that might try to come against me. He ordered my steps and arranged my life to lead me back to Him and the place where I was always meant to be all along. I can trust Him as a Father, as One who is always on my side, will always take care of me. Always love me. He will never leave me and I will never be alone. He has always been faithful in the past, and I have seen His faithfulness all my life.

I have seen the place where I will live, and it is just ahead of me. It is a place of infinite trust in Yahweh, of leaving things in His hands and not having to control anything. Of trusting Him to keep my heart safe even when all around me are circumstances and situations designed to pierce it and tear it to ribbons. In this place I will walk in a greater level of freedom and rest and peace than I have ever known before. I glimpsed it for a little while, but now I shall walk in it permanently. For I have seen it.

I have seen, and I remember. The light shone in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. Faith is the art of keeping the light on when all around you is darkness, the steadfast holding of the Word that you've seen even when you cannot fully envision it anymore. Faith is seeing the unseen, and this time is just part of the process of maturity.

For if sin, when it is full-grown, leads to death, fully mature faith leads to the manifestation of Yahweh's promises in the visible realm so that all can see what we've seen all along.

And when this happens it is called glory. So glory! HalleluYah! I have seen.