Experience vs Encounter

I experience a school system that suspends my 5-year-old, but I encounter teachers and community that wrap around us.

I experience an inequitable and frustrating medical system, but I encounter a doctor who fights for me.

I experience consecutive governments who just seem to do damage, but I encounter a politician that I could be friends with.

I experience brokenness - breaking families - children as collateral damage, but I encounter a friend wrestling with the thought of fostering a newborn baby.

I experience church systems which outright hurt me, but I encounter Christians offering me the fruit of the Spirit.

It’s all too easy to get caught in what feels like a mind game; to lie down and give up. It feels too hard. I can’t be bothered persevering anymore.

When I experience defeat, my homeschooling 6-year-old man child crawls into my lap and gives me a delicious cuddle, patting my back while he does. I encounter unconditional love.

What is the most important thing in the world?
He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata
It is people, it is people, it is people.

Watching the experiences pile up is soul destroying. But turning your eyes to the encounters; to the people? That’s life giving. It’s hope inducing. It’s heaven on earth. It’s the reflection of Jesus.

For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain on mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 17:20

I got faith. I’ve told that mountain to move. I swear it moves one pebble at a time. God is powerful enough to give it legs and make it walk, but He’s much more interested in who we become while it shifts. Sometimes I have the ability to pivot my gaze and see a small mound of progress is gathering, but then I come back and see that stupid impossible mountain in front of me. I have to return to the dance of working out the pebbles I need to faithfully hurl and what I need to leave for my Sovereign God to lift for me.

Contentment can be found in the most bizarre places. Lie down and rest with me today in the unknown, in the encounters that await you today.