Blinding Light vs. Common Sense

"I need some tablets or something!" Janet so aptly said after we at Warm Blankets watched an installment of a Ray Vanderlaan teaching series. He had just taught about Paul's conversion experience and his first stop in Antioch after being blinded on the road to Damascus, and we were all discussing why God doesn't just grab our attention with bright lights and booming voices like He did Paul, or give us some stone tablets with clear directions like He did Moses. Well, sometimes He does in His own way, and as Janet also said later, it's good to remember those things too.

On Wednesday, I carried my blue "Brazil" folder into the Post Office and shipped my passport and an attached visa application to Arlington, VA. I am desperately hoping it will return to me in just a week or two, with a sticker in it that says I can go to Brazil as much as I want (or rather, 180 days out of each year) for 5 years. In this time of waiting, I have once again been brought back to a place of utter dependence on God and also of remembrance of His faithfulness and past direction.

I suppose I have had some moments where I felt God really hit me over the head and told me where I should go. And like He showed Paul in Antioch, as Ray Vanderlaan described, He has also shown me "this is where you're supposed to be." The rainbow spread across the countryside in Parana is one example, and the dozens that I saw the day before I left Brazil served also as a reminder that it wouldn't be the last. Another was when I emailed OMS and had Jim email me back hours later saying he would like to have lunch with me that week. Or how about meeting and being able to sing for two new Brazilian friends in Florida? God has been clear, and He isn't going to stop now.

It is easy for me to wonder and to doubt at this point in my journey. I have thought more in the last two or three days about whether or not I will actually make it to Brazil than I have in a long time. What if I totally missed a turn? What if I'm following a white rabbit through its hole, only to come up on the other side of the dinner table? What if I want this so badly that I have stopped listening to God and am so immersed in my own twisted reality that I have no idea what is going on?
I have no idea.
But I do know that this is what God requires: abandonment.

"If you yourself do not cut the lines that tie you to the dock, God will have to use a storm to sever them and to send you out to sea. Put everything in your life afloat upon God, going out to sea on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and your eyes will be opened. If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the calm waters just inside the harbor, full of joy, but always tied to the dock. You have to get out past the harbor into the great depths of God, and begin to know things for yourself— begin to have spiritual discernment."
-Oswald Chambers

My lines are cut and I can't even see the dock anymore. I'm floating, the tide is swelling, and I'm holding on. But in the same way that Jesus calmed the storm with his disciples, I know He can here too. And I hope that I can have a little more faith in Him than they did in that situation...although at the moment, that is merely high on my to-do list, not so much a reality.