Often times when I think about talking to God, I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach that I shouldn’t bother him unless it’s a life or death situation. There are nearly 7 billion people in the world [at the moment I’m writing this] and he’s looking after them all. Surely he doesn’t have time for the tiny details of my life when people around the world are in dire need of help.
So, I take care of things myself. And I get stressed and worn out and things fall apart.
According to Luke 12:7, God even knows the exact number of hairs each and every one of us have at any given moment. And anyone who would take the time to know something that trivial must care about the seemingly insignificant details of our lives as well. This idea that God cares about even the most minute detail is something He’s been working on with me a lot lately.
To illustrate this better, let me tell you a story about one tiny detail that God was passionate about. The idea of walking across the country wasn’t some crazy, hair-brained idea I concocted on my own. It was a vision born nearly 11 years ago on the campus of Purdue University in Indiana during a national youth convention.
My life was impacted in countless ways during that week. We heard some incredible speakers who loved God in ways I didn’t even know were possible. But one speaker stood out among the rest. The specific details of her story remain fuzzy, but her message gripped me. She had been challenged by God to drop everything and walk from Washington (the state) to Florida. She told us stories about God providing for her, using her, changing her. She had been on the adventure of a lifetime and I wanted that so bad.
Since that conference, I have dreamed of a similar opportunity. My heart longs to share what God has done in my life. And to do it in a way that would challenge me so incredibly at the same time just seems hard to pass up. So for 11 years, I have been determined to make my own journey across the country.
As we began putting this blog together, I thought continually of the inspiration behind this vision and I was haunted by the fact that I could not find the woman who’s story has had such a tremendous impact on my life. For years, I have googled just about everything imaginable that could possibly lead me to finding her name, but I got nowhere.
And then about a month ago I found a journal I had written the in July of 2000. My heart nearly skipped a beat as I anticipated this possibly containing my answer. I flipped through page after page until I found it. There it was, Judy Howard (now Peterson). I contacted the Evangelical Free Church of America to confirm that she had in fact been a speaker at their national conference (I’m not sure why I didn’t think to contact them in the first place), and they verified that it was her and helped me get in contact with her.
Without the knowledge of her name, we would have continued just the same. It was not information that was imperative to our trip or our message. It was a tiny detail in the big picture of life. But God cared about it.
Psalm 139
1 You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
-Lindsie
