The World Race is a lot like life. Sometimes it just happens to you. Like when you get stuck spending the night on a bus because Mozambique has checkpoints that your bus didn’t get through on time. Or when the only way to sunstantive protein is cutting off a chicken head. Or when ministry is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. and we are still pacing around at 2 p.m. Or when you spend six months falling in love and then stumble in to a team change. For the better part of our time in Mozambique, I feel like the race (also called life) has been happening to me. My permission be damned, my expectations denied, and my agenda unmet.
The beautiful thing about life is that it is not truly lived in the happenings but in the attitude of our minds. At some point, a miserable day becomes an internal problem. I could lament over unmet expectations. I could count down the days until we leave this place. Or I can change. Change my perspective to appreciate downtime with friends. Trade my anticipation for the end of the day for heavenly perspective within the day. Change my inactivity to a personal project.
This week, Team Audacious Love is refusing to let the race happen to us. The race, as awesome as it is, will not change you by osmosis or necessity. You will get out what you are willing to give in. Our team has just a few days left in Mozambique. Just a few days with beautiful people like Pastor Abel, Chico, and Tony. Just a few days with the adorable kids in Dondo. Just a few days of walking each morning to the bakery and sitting at night underneath the incredible blanket of stars. Just a few days of this incredibly unique country and all that God is doing here.
Our ministry hasn’t been what we hoped, so we have found new ones. Our contact has not fought very hard to find a place for us to serve, so we are walking out in the Spirit to find places with the eyes of our own hearts. Our time has been spent waiting, now we are going to do. Life has been happening to us. We have waited and patiently taken our punches, now we ourselves are pressing in; asking life for more, audacious enough to be unsatisfied with what we can get away with and bold enough to pursue all we can do.
We found a ministry in town that is going to help us build a church (small church) over the next few days for a group of widows who have been worshipping together. This morning we took it on ourselves to just prayer walk through the village and ask where we can help (I learned how Dondo draws water from deep wells, we shared spirit-filled prayer with a blind woman, and loved the heck out of some kids). We’re going to be crazy enough to start our own worship in the hollowed out/unfinished church by our house, to bring a soccer ball and watch it magnetically draw the children to us.
The race is like life, we cannot wait for it to change us, we cannot sit aside and twiddle our thumbs while expecting it to bring meaning gift wrapped with a bow. There is life out here. Life that is truly life. Love that is the Presence of God. It is about time we sought it, about time we ran toward it, about time we owned it in our own lives.
My favorite thing about Team Audacious Love is that spiritual depth is our default. We sometimes stray toward superficial conversation, but mostly we define our time with intimacy with the Lord. I feel like normal life is too often the opposite, with the superficial as default and straying into spiritual depth only on rare occassion. This team identity is spilling over in to ministry. We are not content waiting this month out, not content feeling like there is more to do. We so often miss the point – that there is GOD out there, in here, and behind that thing. We can whine and wallow, cower and hide, fuss and furry, as life happens to us. But it is what we make of those happenings that defines our hearts, reveals our spirit, and determines the value of our days.
