Your Right Hand Shall Hold Me

Written by Audren B — Interning in Kenya.

My week in Ft Myers, Florida, was exciting and productive. Before sending its Venture Interns out to the field, New International provides a week of in-depth and incredible training. I was so impressed with how well thought-out and intentional all the activities, sessions and events were. Everything had its purpose for preparing us for the field; nothing was superfluous. 

Team building activities, culture shock discussions, introspective time with a counselor, personality tests, conflict management training, and information about healthy culture entry models, not to mention lots of worship and prayer times, all filled me up with a confidence to meet the challenges that I know I will face these next eight weeks in Kenya. 

God used this training to equip me. He reminded me to depend on His strength, not my own, and I know He will never be anything but steadfast in His faithfulness and provision. 

Besides going above and beyond with training activities, New International’s Mobilization team did a fantastic job of providing us interns with a lot of rest and alone time, scheduling in breaks and taking us on a field trip to a lovely park and to the beach. During these quiet moments, I got to spend some quality time with the Lord. All week, I kept feeling reassured by the Spirit that God is with me, and wherever I go, He will still be there. 
 

During one of the rest times, He spoke specifically through Psalm 139 to me. This is a psalm a lot of us are familiar with (“for you knitted me together in my mother’s womb”, “fearfully and wonderfully made”), but God gave me a new understanding of a few of the verses.

If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
even there your hand shall lead me, 

and your right hand shall hold me. 

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, 
and the light about me be night,” 
even the darkness is not dark to you; 
the night is as bright as the day, 
for darkness is as light with you.
 

Psalm 139:9-12

When I read this in the past, I always thought that the psalmist was purposefully hiding, trying to pointlessly outrun God. But that afternoon, I felt God give me a new understanding that the psalmist might actually be afraid, fearful they would be lost and that God wouldn’t be there for them. I definitely felt a similar “surely the darkness shall cover me” feeling a few times during orientation week! And yet God reassured me that I will not be alone, lost, or forsaken. He will be there to comfort and protect me in the darkness, for darkness is as light to Him.