Heart Cries from Around the World

I’m always asking myself questions, lots of questions, in this incessant conversation that I carry on in my head. Questions about myself. Questions about my circumstances. Questions about God.

I wonder what other people around the world are thinking about, too. What are the cries of their hearts? What are they looking for? What questions do they ask in the dark of the night or the uncertainty of their days?

So, being the curious investigator that I am, (Did I ever mention that I considered the CIA or the FBI for a career?) I began to observe the statistics related to this blog.

If you are not familiar with how this can be done, I’ll briefly explain. I have the ability to see where people come in from to my site. I can’t tell who they are, just the geographic location, from anywhere in the world. In addition, I can tell how they found my blog. For instance, someone may type in to their search engine, “God prunes to bear more fruit.” Once doing that, a long list of places that have written on this topic pop up, including my post on how God's gentle Hand prunes to produce more fruit. The interested person then may choose to click on to my site, and possibly (hopefully) read what I wrote.

Over a two month period this spring, I recorded what people “googled” that brought them to my blog. There have been some interesting ones. From the Netherlands, someone entered “is having a snake a sin,” and came to my story about sin being like a snake. In Canada, someone entered “easy way to move a large stone” and came in to the story that I wrote about the large stone that was rolled out of the way of the tomb at the resurrection of Jesus.

And I don’t know what it is about birds, but there have been quite a few that have come in to my post Like Birds on a Wire, about loving each other. People entered words of curiosity like “how do birds keep balance on a wire,” “advert about a bird on a wire with the other birds and they don’t like the bird,” and (humorous to me) “why some people don’t like birds – they are God’s birds.”

Sadly, recently one person from India typed in “Lord, how does one feel when one is rejected and discarded?” I hope that they read what I wrote and that it helped. It breaks my heart. I prayed for them the instant I read it.

There are many questions that people are seeking answers for that have brought them to my blog, some of the most common being, “a bruised reed He will not break,” “renewing my strength in God,” and “God does not sleep or slumber.”

But … the most common phrase that I see people wondering about, that brings them in to my blog is some variation of this – “The will of God will not lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you.” I wrote about this in November of last year, and still to this day, at least one person (if not multiple people) come in through this quote. Over this two month period this Spring, I recorded 101 people from 35 of the 50 states and 34 people from all corners of the world – Trinidad, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, Singapore, Canada, Philippines, India, Brazil and Norway. Perhaps it really is a small world after all. This is amazing to me.

I am encouraged that I am not alone. There are others (all over the world) that wonder about whether the will of God will take them where they cannot be kept by His grace, and a multitude of other questions. We wonder together. We struggle together. But there is hope. We are secure in the love of God, as we seek to trust the Lord Jesus in all things. The promise of God’s security is not “from” but “in” all trials. We are not immune to difficulties. He takes us through them by being close to us, and supplying us with the grace that we need for every moment. When He asks us to do something or brings us in to a valley, He will always provide for us – in His grace – just what we need.