The following is a conversational, written version of a testimony from Natalie Lantz given at chapel on January 29, 2020.
My name is Natalie, and I am a third-year student here, studying English. There’s a poem that I love, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This is just a stanza of it, she writes:
“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
I love this poem because it’s in the small things that we see God the most.
I got asked to share a testimony of something that God has done in my life because of his faithfulness, and I immediately called a friend. I called a friend, because he’s done so much in my life, and knowing that I had less than 5 minutes to share, I didn’t know what I was going to say, which story I was going to pick. We chatted about it for a few minutes and he mentioned how I should talk about the small things. If you know me well, you know that I am a lover of small things, the in between moments that are often missed. There have been times where God has done massive things in my life, but in the mundane, the everyday is where I see him the most.
God’s faithfulness shines through at this school, in so many ways. I see his hand in the classroom, in the way the professors care deeply about each student that comes through their door. I see him in the hallways, in the clusters of people chatting, the community building and in the smiles of my friends. I see him through the intercampus mail, getting a piece of encouragement just as I needed it. I see him in the ministries on campus knowing that when I welcome the women on campus into a place of worship and fellowship, that he is already there.
I see him in my dorm, in the late night conversations and in the early mornings before anyone else is awake. I see him in the dishes that pile up, because it means that there was fellowship happening around the table. I see him in the sunrises that are painted across the sky that I watch every morning, while making an AeroPress in my kitchen. I see him in the coffee shops that I write in, knowing that even if the people sitting around are unaware of his love, they still carry his DNA, we all do.
I see his faithfulness in everything that I encounter, his fingerprints are over everything if we take the time to pay attention.
And this semester, I’ve seen him in the little things like providing money for textbooks when I knew that I wasn’t going to have enough, but we serve a God who cares about the littlest of things, and he provided me with the exact amount that I needed to buy my textbooks for this semester.
In Lamentations, there is a verse that reads,
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Even in the small things, God is still faithful. I’ve had to learn how to find him in these little moments, and it’s still a process that I am working on, but it’s in the mundane that I see him the most. His faithfulness echoes off of these hallways, throughout this campus. I see it.
“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”