Facebook should be renamed to LifeIsPassingMeByBook.
If you're like me, you feel Facebook endlessly beckoning you to scroll down your news feed. You see lots of happy people sharing pictures and stories of their epic adventures in life. As you scroll, you become increasingly aware that you're not in those pictures and that your stories don't seem quite so fun as theirs.
This feeling is amplified when doing fundraising.
The reason you're fundraising is because you signed up for an epic adventure from the Lord. You're going to be doing exciting work that will impact both this world and the next! Still, that's not how your time of fundraising feels. Fundraising involves a lot of waiting. It involves a lot of rejection. It involves diligently planning, calling, writing and waiting again. So when you turn to Facebook's News Feed of Despair, it won't be long before you're feeling like life is passing you by.
Is it?
"Is life passing me by?" is actually the wrong question. The assumes that life is some force with a will that's trying to get one up on you. The Scriptures paint a different picture, however. The Scriptures tell us that there's a sovereign God who is actively and lovingly moving the world along its course (
Romans 8:28, Acts 17:26-27). God doesn't feel any pressure to move life along any faster or slower than fits His purposes:
But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Peter 3:8-9 ESV)
That passage is speaking of salvation and perishing, so how much more should we trust God in matters of money and fundraising appointments?
God prepared Joseph to save the world by having him spend much of his young life in slavery and in prison. God prepared Moses to lead a nation by having him spend the better part of his life tending sheep on the backside of a mountain. God spent around 40,000,000 man years of time by having Israel wander in the desert before reaching the promised land, all so that we today might have an example to learn from (
1 Cor 10:1-11).
Do not think life is cruelly passing you by; rather, know that God is actively and lovingly preparing you for the exact work He has in store. You will be done with fundraising not a moment before or after He decides.
In the meantime, don't go
comparing yourself with others on Facebook or otherwise. In the fullness of time, Jesus came into this world, died for you, saved you, commissioned you and sent you. The most epic news feed in the world could not compare with that.
