For His Glory!

"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts."  Isaiah 55:9 (NAS)

I've been thinking alot about this verse lately.
It seems that God does not do things the way I think I would if I were Him.

Huh.
 
Probably not too surprising to you. 
But I am constantly surprised by how surprised I am when God doesn't listen to how I think He should do things.

Today is the five year anniversary of the day we bought our home in Lincoln.  The last $1,500 of our "fix-up our trash-hole of a first home" mortgage is forgiven today.  Too bad we've paid an extra...oh...probably $4,000 for a house we're not living in the last six months. 
No one seems to want to buy our home.  We've started asking everyone we know. 
Wanna buy our house??? 
Here it is!!!
It's not fancy, but it's cheap!  And it has new siding and windows and kitchen cabinets and flooring and doors and pretty paint.  And I killed most of the spiders that have moved in over the last six months when I was there Saturday. 
Sorry... I got a little carried away.  =)

Anyway, the point of this is that we should not be able to pay the combined rent and mortgage on two homes. 
Not for six months.

On top of that, after months of debating back and forth, we've decided to send the kids to NC.  I think we seem a bit crazy.  Because obviously we have no extra money right now.  And there's nothing wrong with the (free!) public school four blocks down the road. 
But Caleb and I have prayed for God's direction, and we both came to the conclusion that this is what God is calling us to do with our kids for this year.  So I thought we'd have to find some extra money lying around.  Goodbye carefully saved "romantical vacation for our 10th anniversary" fund...  =(
Anyone have a rich great-aunt who would like to adopt us?

And I am amazed by God. 
I'm not sure you need all the messy details.  But in ways that I would never expect, in timing that I usually think is too slow, He's providing for this decision. 
Without our house selling. 
And without using my not-so-necessary romantical vacation fund.
Things I did not think were possible.

And He's getting the glory for it.  Because it obviously isn't our decision-making talent that got us here. 
We did not move to Central City to send the kids to NC. 
We almost bought a house out in the middle of nowhere before selling ours in Lincoln. 
We almost just stayed in Lincoln forever.
 
But I have this feeling that God knows what He's doing in the middle of all this craziness.  Like maybe the end result of all this moving and job-changing and church-switching and lack of absolutes on the plan for our lives (none of which I wanted, by the way) might turn out to be pretty great. 
For His glory!

Loving the least

So they seem to have  managed to do something.  Made some sort of deal that doesn't fix the problem at all - just extends their opportunity to fix it.  That is, if I'm understanding what happened right.
Meanwhile:
Beneath all the front page headlines - buried underneath "important" stuff like:
"Blazing Heat Scorches Midwest, South"
"Biden Criticized for 'Terrorist' Tea Party Remarks"
"Machine Turns Air into Water"
"Miley's Tattoo Starts Twitter War"
"Putin: America's a Parasite on World's Economy"
(These are all front page headlines from Fox News and CNN this morning)
Half way around the world.   Something no one seems to want to talk much about.  I literally could not find anything about it on Fox News.  And one article buried in the World section of CNN.  I had to google it.
Here.
People are dying.  Starving.  In Somalia and much of eastern Africa.  I've heard stories of mothers walking six weeks to find a filthy refugee camp with at least a small amount of food - leaving their children dying on the side of the road on the way.  A five year old can't walk for six weeks with little or no food or water.  Can you imaging the heartbreak?
And men who HATE preventing willing aid workers from helping the most desperate.  Those men will face God some day.  
Why is it so hard to see?  We like sensational news.  We like graphic news.  We like unique news.  We like to be entertained. 
We do not like hopelessness.  We're not really that interested in people half a world away who have nothing.  People die in Africa all the time, right?  At least it's not me.
But these are people.  Created in God's image.  Loved by Him.
As God's children, we had better care.
If Jesus were a man on earth today, He would care.  He would weep with the suffering.  And He would do something - what He could do - to help. 
That's why I was excited!  When I googled "Somalia famine", guess what the first link was?
www.samaritanspurse.org
So I clicked the link and was led here. 
God's people being His hands and feet in a part of the world that desperately needs Him.  While our politicians (the "powerful" people in our country) try to make each other look bad, God's people take it upon themselves to do something. 
God's challenge to me is Pray!  Give!  Do something!  In My name!  To bring Me more glory!
How can I ignore?