Sometimes overseas, I didn’t know which felt more overwhelming: making disciples or attempting to alleviate poverty. 

Both felt like an ocean, which I was addressing with a thimble.

But God’s pattern of character seems to be one of people offering a couple of loaves of bread, a handful of cooked fish—and He offers more than we give or deserve (i.e. grace). 

My mind drifts to Ruth, one of my favorite ladies, despite that she’s about 1,000 times my age. Her recipe for overwhelming situations: 

1. Trust God with the impossibilities. 

“Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you…Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” 

2. Seek to love well with your work. 

“She also brought out and gave her [mother-in-law] what food she had left over after being satisfied.”

3. Get out there and bust your tail (still full of trust in God). 

“She came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest…” 

If you’re wondering about the tension between our work and God’s, I like R.C. Sproul’s answer: “Even our work, though, flows from a spirit of rest and peace…not our frenetic control.” 

4. God provides a mind-blowing, trustworthy result. 

“She beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley [Wikipedia says one ephah is a donkey’s load. A tremendous day’s work for this young woman]. 

“…And her mother-in-law said to her, ‘Where did you glean today? And where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.’” (Naomi is clearly amazed.) 

But God had so much more than even Ruth’s plucky vision in mind. As in, I’ve got a generous, upstanding, well-known guy who will love you. And to top it off, the Savior of all of history will come from you.

I love this pattern. God takes our faith, followed by our diligence (including our failure!), and consistently blows our expectations out of the water.

Our trust is the source of our work, and never the other way around. 

The results may not always look like what I asked for. But I trust even that.