What has God put in your hand with which to worship him?

As laborers for the Gospel, we don’t ask for suffering. Nor do we look for it. But Jesus has told us to expect it. The apostles rejoiced because they were counted as worthy to suffer for the sake of the Gospel. They worshipped the Lord after suffering. As laborers, many of us have given up worldly comforts and material gain for the sake of the Gospel. While there has been much sacrifice and loss, there has also been unfathomable spiritual gain. 

I sat with a friend of mine who was counting the cost of being a laborer. She was seeing many around her losing their visas and having to leave the people they had grown to love. Wondering if she would face the same lot, she was wrestling with a fear of loss and a fear of enduring the unknown. Knowing that my family had left our adopted country because we too had been denied a visa, this friend gingerly asked her questions with tears in her eyes. “Laurie, I know that God is sovereign, but it strikes me as cruelly insensitive to say this to you in light of the pain and loss you have suffered.” 

“Oh, Sarah,” I responded. “God was faithful through it all. He was present. And he was good.”

Unaware, we talked straight through the worship session at the conference we were attending. 

What if this is my worship? What if all I have in my hands to offer is this story with grief and loss, and I get to offer it back to him in adoration? What if these are my two coins? Because of this loss, I have been given the gift of tears, the gift of being comforted, the gift of seeing God sustain, and the gift of seeing God redeem. I am able to proclaim his faithfulness. Furthermore, while these scars on the story of my life may look like copper coins to the watching world, what if they are actually the treasures that I am privileged to bring to his feet in adoration?