“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

Luke 2:19

U-Squad is a people marked by courage and boldness, with a hunger for sharing the gospel, using their free time for evangelizing and praying over the community, and a vigor for achieving their goals. 

We have been in Kigali, Rwanda, for three weeks now, with Hope Ethiopia/Rwanda ministering to the women in their tailoring program. The ministry invites women off the street to take part in a six-month program where they learn skills to begin their own tailoring business, even gifting them with their own sewing machine at the time of their graduation. Many of the women who come to Hope are involved in survival sex work, turning to any source of income to feed their children; many are just teenagers themselves who have missed out on school and are doing whatever it takes to put food on the table. Attending the tailoring program not only gifts them with tailoring skills, but also community, counseling, and discipleship, fixing their eyes on the hope of the gospel, and putting them back on their feet for a new life. 

We have had the sweet joy of teaching the women English, leading daily devotionals, and pouring into their lives. This past week, we attended the current class’s graduation ceremony and visited the homes of the incoming class of women.

One thing my squad leader Maddie and I have loved this fall is creating collages using magazines. Vision casting for the semester ahead, and creating gifts for our racers. While on our way out of America, Maddie picked up the fall edition of The Magnolia Journal. On our second leader day we opened it up for the first time to make new collages. While we expected to fly through it and pick out the images and messages we liked best, we encountered the spirit of the Lord in the journal. The whole theme was “An Invitation to Linger Longer” and perhaps was revealing a thread the Lord is weaving through our time with U-Squad. 

One specific page was all about “Golden Moments” and invited the reader to light a small candle and take a pause from life to “bring you back to center, bring you home to the depth within”. While it was a sweet invitation to pause and meditate, it related in our hearts to beholding the Lord, remaining still in Him, and walking with interruptibility in our ministry here. While our squad is one for charging forth, there is a distinct tenderness to the heart the Lord has placed in each of our racers this past week. Taking a break from the usual flow this week to visit the new class in their homes and communities, spending a day listening to their testimonies and stories, and taking a day trip with the women to Rwanda’s Lake Muhazi has brought us into a rhythm of assured rest. Shifting from achieving what needs to be done and settling into a tenderness, a sweetness of restoring these women with the heart and words of Christ. Our commission for ministering to these women came from Isaiah 40:1-11. A call to comfort and speak hope to a people wounded by circumstance. A call to prepare the way and make space for the move of God. A call to proclaim his good news. To speak and testify to His unchanging word. A call to behold our God. 

To me personally, this month, I have been sitting tenderly with the presence of the Lord. Turning over his word in my heart and mind. Savoring His sweetness in worship, keeping UPPERROOM’s worship set “When I think about the Lord” on repeat. (Linked here, start at 11:34) It calls back to mind the Magnolia Journal we opened this week. There has been such tenderness in pausing to behold Him, pausing to think about Him, and as the song testifies, it makes me want to shout! Like Mary in Luke 2, this month has been a month of storing up treasures in my heart and pondering them.

It can be so easy to fall into ministry productivity, but the real fruit in this season has been learning that efficiency and zeal have to be accompanied by tenderness and presence. It not only stands for ministering to the women we are with, but also for leading and mentoring U-Squad. There has been a holiness to staying long enough to behold, resisting the urge to push past what God is doing simply because there is something to accomplish.

And that is what I’m learning from Mary! She did not rush past the things she witnessed; she treasured them, and she pondered them. She allowed what God was doing to become treasures in her heart before she moved on to whatever came next.

In this season, that’s what it means to me to think about the Lord. To pause long enough to notice Him, to turn His goodness over in my heart. To savor what He is doing rather than simply moving on to the next thing. Because the more I behold Him, the more I find myself wanting to shout about Him!