Lazaro, el soñador

There are two things that never cease to amaze me.  Thing number one:  How good and loving God is.  Thing number two: how shortsighted and foolish I am.

Last week I spent a few days at the house of my friends, David and John.  I always enjoy spending time over there because their father, a Cuban expat, always talks to me.  If you know me, and many of you reading do (and that is, in fact, the reason you read) you know that I love to talk.  I love ideas and I love free exchange of those ideas.  So I love being at their house.  Also, I love being around Cubans.  Always have.

During my last conversation with Mr. Gonzalez I learned about his new job (or maybe he said it was a hobby), which is to write devotions for The Gideons.  He told me about one of the devotions he had just written on Lazarus (here's the good part), paying special attention to focus on the fact that Jesus didn't come when he was called to heal Lazarus.  He didn't even make it back in time for the dead body to be prepared.  He finally came in after Lazarus died.  I saw the immediate connection between that passage of scripture and my life.  I could easily see, that day, how my situation in waiting, in a sense, for God was nothing like Lazarus's.  Even though things sometimes look dim, I thought, I'm not about to die, and even if I were, what of it.  Jesus showed up right when he was supposed to, four days "late".  I get it man, Jesus shows up when he's supposed to so that we may believe.  I know, I know.

I forgot.

I spent the majority of the day receiving bad news.  Getting a work visa to Japan is not the easiest thing to do, especially for US citizens.  I don't suggest trying it unless you absolutely have to.  It's disheartening work, too; calling every company I can find just to have them tell me systematically that they don't sponsor workers but will hire anyone who already has a visa (you have to have a company or relative sponsor you in order to get a work visa to Japan).  The three or four companies that were willing to give me sponsorship all told me that if I had called a month ago or two months ago I would be a very good candidate because they would have had time to secure a work visa before the school year starts.  A month or two ago I was still under the impression that work was going to be found for me.  It all felt so unproductive and discouraging.  I spent most of the day near-wallowing in self-pity.

But just now I remembered Lazarus.  If I die before I wake, Jesus will be glorified, and that's really the whole point of it all anyway, right?  Thinking about Lazarus makes the whole situation seem just a little less terrible.

God's timing is so much better than mine.  I don't always remember it though.

So Pray for me.