Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events.
—Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines
The first book that really ever impacted my life was Cold Tangerines. In one of the first chapters, there's this idea that every moment– every single little trivial, tough, terrific moment– is part of this grand, beautiful storybook. I'd obviously been taught that in Sunday School, but hearing it in such real, accessible terms made something click for me. Since I read those words as a sophomore in high school, I've tried to live them out, but that's often easier said than done.
Yesterday, I had the closest thing to a "Last Supper" that I've ever experienced. It would take a novel to explain the events of the day leading up to the moment, but suffice it to say I was running on empty, both physically and mentally. My body was exhausted, my brain was tired, and I was very aware of being alone and helpless in middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts. (Not by my own decisions, my adventures had taken me out of Boston for a day.)
Which is why, when I found myself sitting cross-legged on a bench at a deserted train station, eating a $3 Stop-and-Shop deli sandwich and gulping a Powerade like it was my lifeblood, I suddenly was reminded of that passage from Cold Tangerines. I was profoundly, deeply thankful for that food, but also for something more. The food was a physical representation of God's provisions for me this summer. I realized that no matter where I am, who I'm with, or what I've done, God's there. I could've cried in that moment, because everything that has happened to me in this season has fallen perfectly into place, even when I thought it was hopeless. So many provisions, coming through at what seemed like the last minute, but was really just God's perfect timing.
Nothing about my meal seems right on paper. It wasn't lunch or dinner time, but rather that awkward in-between. I wasn't gathered around a table with my closest people. I balanced the food on my lap while sitting outside on a dirty bench (because train "stations" here are really just a roof and a platform). It really, honestly, probably wasn't even that great of a sandwich. But, in its own way, that meal was as important as the Last Supper, because it reminded me of how great, great, great our God is.
—Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines
The first book that really ever impacted my life was Cold Tangerines. In one of the first chapters, there's this idea that every moment– every single little trivial, tough, terrific moment– is part of this grand, beautiful storybook. I'd obviously been taught that in Sunday School, but hearing it in such real, accessible terms made something click for me. Since I read those words as a sophomore in high school, I've tried to live them out, but that's often easier said than done.
Yesterday, I had the closest thing to a "Last Supper" that I've ever experienced. It would take a novel to explain the events of the day leading up to the moment, but suffice it to say I was running on empty, both physically and mentally. My body was exhausted, my brain was tired, and I was very aware of being alone and helpless in middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts. (Not by my own decisions, my adventures had taken me out of Boston for a day.)
Which is why, when I found myself sitting cross-legged on a bench at a deserted train station, eating a $3 Stop-and-Shop deli sandwich and gulping a Powerade like it was my lifeblood, I suddenly was reminded of that passage from Cold Tangerines. I was profoundly, deeply thankful for that food, but also for something more. The food was a physical representation of God's provisions for me this summer. I realized that no matter where I am, who I'm with, or what I've done, God's there. I could've cried in that moment, because everything that has happened to me in this season has fallen perfectly into place, even when I thought it was hopeless. So many provisions, coming through at what seemed like the last minute, but was really just God's perfect timing.
Nothing about my meal seems right on paper. It wasn't lunch or dinner time, but rather that awkward in-between. I wasn't gathered around a table with my closest people. I balanced the food on my lap while sitting outside on a dirty bench (because train "stations" here are really just a roof and a platform). It really, honestly, probably wasn't even that great of a sandwich. But, in its own way, that meal was as important as the Last Supper, because it reminded me of how great, great, great our God is.