written 12/16
I woke up this morning in Bangkok.
It’s December and just a few days ago, I was living in a village in the jungle and rice fields of Cambodia. No internet, no sign of an outside world. Just smiling children, naked babies, water buffaloes and rice fields.
Today, I woke up, grabbed my computer and walked 5 minutes to a Starbucks. I’m drinking a peppermint mocha that seems like a dream. I have my entire world at the end of my fingertips thanks to internet and I’m finding myself longing for my jungle village again.
There’s something about village life that changes you. Sure, the circumstances we found ourselves in changed us too…sitting in six days of nonstop grieving, brokenness and sobs with a precious family does a lot to a person. But it was so much more than that.
Village life really exposes a lot of things about yourself.
Dependence on anything except for God.
Desires to show people all the things you’re experiencing that stem from selfishness.
Reaching for security in anything and forgetting the one who calls you Secure in Him.
It’s pretty uncomfortable.
It also puts a new song in your heart. A new desire for the simplicity you get a taste of.
As I’m sitting in a cozy Starbucks in a new country, I ache for the simplicity of dirt roads full of cows and a rice field. For vibrant greens that never end and blue skies that seem to swallow you whole.
Village life helped me truly taste and see that the Lord is good. It removed me from comfort and exposed the appetites that I feed in vain, hoping they will satisfy me.
A lot of people talk about mountaintop experiences in our walks with the Lord…and about how we can’t stay there forever. I think I expected this year to be one big mountaintop experience (and in some ways, it has been). But I’m discovering that that’s not necessarily what I want anymore.
(photo credit: Leah Bentrup)
I want this year to teach me to have the village relationship with Jesus.
Every day.
Controlled and compelled by Him instead of other appetites I seek to fill.
Waking up early to spend those sweet minutes before the sun and the roosters wake up basking in the presence of the One who spoke them both into being.
Accepting that the glory and the Jesus I see in breathtaking creation is the same glory and Jesus inside of me.
Because it’s worth it.
It’s worth walking barefoot down a dirt road.
It’s worth not knowing whether the road is covered in potholes or poop – because it empties out to a field of indescribable, incomparable beauty.
(photo credit: Leah Bentrup)
