Safe in His Arms

On the 10th we had our December Day with the Lord. I didn't go in expecting much to happen, just hoping for a restful day to spend with Jesus and thankful for the time to get out of the apartment for awhile. I went for a walk along the Kanda River that runs by my neighborhood. The sun was warm and the air was sharp but refreshing. Walking quickly, my brain wandered in and out of thoughts and prayer. There was no goal or intent for the time, I just wanted to get away from everything.

Further along the river walk is a small playground and benches. I found a bench in a patch of sunlight so I sat down and started listening to my i-pod. Everything was fine and dandy until Phil Wickham's Safe started playing. Out of nowhere I began bawling my eyes out. In that instant I felt completely alone, totally wiped out, and utterly helpless. There are no words to describe the moment except it was very dark and very sad. It was shocking, too, because I thought I was entering the day in a pretty good place. Ministry, team stuff, and time with the Lord the previous week had all been good. And yet here I was crying on a bench in the middle of Tokyo, hiding the tears with my sunglasses and blowing my nose on a waxy napkin from the Vie de France Cafe. Apparently all was not well.

That afternoon I tried to figure out why I had felt so sad in that moment. Nothing came to mind. I certainly have daily struggles with living in such a foreign place, of being bold on campus and not worn down by spiritual warfare, and of being content where I am so far from friends and family. While these are all hard things, none seemed to explain the depth of my despair in that instant. As I was thinking through all this, I felt the Lord calling me and reminding me of something else that had happened as I sat on the bench.

Tears running down my face, the words of the song "the hands that hold the world are holding your heart" rang in my head. Though I didn't understand why I related to the song so much, why my heart felt so tired and broken, I clearly felt the Lord holding me. In that instant of pure sorrow and loneliness he showed up and made his presence known.

There are only a handful of moments in my life that I can point to and say I felt God's presence in my life. Because they are few and far between, these moments are extremely beautiful and precious to me. This moment was a gift from my very gracious heavenly Father and I cherish it.

I still don't know why I felt so sad on Monday. I don't know if I will ever have an answer. But I'm now okay with that because I do know something more important- I know, without a doubt, that the Lord met me in my sadness and held me in his arms. And I know I will always have that moment of certainty and assurance when the going gets tough and life seems very dark. The Lord is good to give us these moments of absolute certainty of his existence to cling to when our world is falling apart and our faith is weak. I'm thankful for his love and grace expressed to me in this way.

My prayer for all of us is that we would daily become more aware of how safe we are in the Father's arms.