“What has been your 5 bar moment with God so far?”
That was the question asked by my teammate last month in Malaysia. You know the cell power signals, the more bars the more signal strength you have. So that, but with God. Right.
The title of World Racer can be associated with many things depending on what Instagram posts you’ve followed or what amazing life changing blog your eyes were just lucky enough to read.
But what if on your race (I’m talking your life now, not just the World Race), you haven’t had a movie worthy God moment. What if you haven’t seen healing. What if you haven’t seen women decide to step away from the sex trafficking industry. What if you are having to examine your life for the everyday mundane things that make up 90% of it? Would you still give the mundane things in your life the honor of being “5 bar” strong?
During our time in Cambodia, our team had the privilege of visiting a village on the outskirts of town every Sunday. We met in a one room building on the edge of a field, and every Sunday I had the blessing of watching 40+ kids trek across a dirt pasture just to attend Sunday school. Their clothes were ridden with holes and stains, and their hair was so infested with lice that if you sat long enough (roughly 1 minute) and looked for it, you could see them crawling through the thick strands of black hair. But man. Their joy is unreal. They’d come screaming, giggling, and curious. We’d spend an hour and a half just playing with them. Just letting them be kids and hoping that somehow in that time, God was revealing himself to them.
One week in particular, I had a conversation with my team on our way home about a certain little girl. She was wearing a sweater vest, ripped pants, and her hair was a knotted mess, but shoooot she was cute. She had a smile that absolutely lit up her face and man was she spunky. She hung in there with the toughest of kids, even if she was 3 or 4 years younger. I gravitated towards her so quickly, it honestly shocked me a bit. I mean I like kids and all, but they intimidate the heck out of me more than half of the time. But not her.
Anyways, fast forward to the following Sunday. We showed up to ministry and I found myself hunting for her in a sea of Khmer children. No luck. Ok, so she just couldn’t make it today, no big deal. We sat down as Kelly began the songs for the day and something down deep told me to keep looking. So I moved to the back of the room, and I scanned. Bingo. Little bit walked in and sat down right beside me at the back.
But other than her facial structure, I would have told anyone this was a different kid. Sitting beside me now was no 6-year-old with a spirit to take on the world. No, what sat beside me now was a lifeless form, content with picking at the scabs on her legs from the bug bites. It showed no emotion. It made no sounds. It had nothing living inside. It was dead.
I tried to sing with her. She shrugged me off. I tried consoling her, she looked only at the spots on her legs, now bleeding from her picking at them. Shamefully, I even tried bribing her into speaking by offering her one of my bracelets. Nothing. Talking to the wall may have given me a better reaction.
Ok. God. . PLEASE make her smile. Do whatever it takes because obviously nothing I’m doing is working. Just make her smile again.
In that moment, I sensed her shift beside me. BINGO. Got her, I thought. But to my complete disappointment, the shifting I felt beside me was due to her getting up and moving away from me to go sit along the wall. Awesome, so now she isn’t even wanting to sit by me. Not exactly what I asked. .
The morning went on, and I am confidently stating that that morning was one of my favorites so far. I had kids hanging off of me like I was their own personal jungle gym and by the end of it all I was exhausted from laughter. As my teammate moved to the front to close the morning in prayer, I bowed my head and placed my hands behind my back.
At first it was slight, but then it built into a pattern. Two little hands high fiving my own and jerking back each time I tried to catch them. I opened one eye and turned to see my opponent.
There she stood, with the biggest, goofiest grin I’d ever seen stretched across her face. My girl.
Ok, God. I see you.
Now joined by her own little shadow (another little bit about 3-years-old), the two girls moved to stand beside me, each holding one of my hands. And then we danced. We needed no music, no one to tell us what to do, we just jumped and pulled each other into the weirdest dance ever, smiles all around. In that moment, nothing else mattered but laughter and togetherness.
As our dance came to a close, I once again bowed my head, and with a few sneak peeks, I watched the girls do the same. Tears gathered as I felt their hands cover mine. On our last day together, we prayed hand in hand, on bended knee. Unified. Smiling.
There it is. My biggest God moment of the race so far involved me submitting to God in order that he make a 6-year-old smile. That’s all.
In 4 months when I’m home, chances are good that I wont see God pulling women out of sex trafficking. I may not experience mass healings. I may not experience child exploitation or poverty equal to what I’ve seen over the past year (or I will, who knows but God). But I will see little things. I’ll see a ton of little moments, that essentially look like nothing. The question lies in whether or not I’ll choose to see God in those little moments. Will I see Him in the mundane or will I limit Him to being too mighty to enter into my normal everyday life?
Recently I heard a pastor say, “If you want real relationships, you’d better start finding value in the mundane things. In the ordinary.”
My “ordinary now” is different than my “at home ordinary.” At home, ordinary looks like me calling my family instead of waiting on them to initiate. It looks like having coffee dates and going to soccer games and doing the dishes simple because someone was kind enough to feed me and hey, they deserve a break. It looks like random acts of kindness. It looks like writing letters of encouragement. It looks like asking God to give me the heart He has for every single person around me. So that when the time comes, no matter how “ordinary” I can love them with everything I have in the best way possible.
I hate trying to sum up blog posts especially when the topic could go on forever, so I leave you with a question that I would honestly love to know the answer to: What does loving in the mundane look like for you? What are ways that our lives back at home, in the creature comforts of American consumerism, can be an example of constantly seeking God? What are your everyday 5 bar moments?
Be encouraged. Find your 5 bars right where you are. No matter what they entail.
–Encouragement:know that the past 7 months have been full of “ordinary” people partnering alongside individuals who sought God in the little things. Individuals who saw others as worth loving when the world told them they were invisible. Individuals who sought the person rather than the principles telling them what they were supposed to be doing.–
