I’ve had to get real honest with myself this month and just accept it—this isn’t what I hoped for on the World Race. The argument that so many had presented before I left, of “But you can serve at home and your friends and family won’t have to support you with thousands of dollars to travel the world,” was seemingly justified when I found myself here, painting the walls of a daycare for children no worse-off than some kids in the states. Not sharing the gospel. Not holding orphans. Not bringing hope and freedom to women stuck in sex slavery. Just painting numbers, letters, and shapes on a cement wall for the kids to see. This attitude and this painting has persisted day after day after day, and it was on one of these days that I, resigned to my state of discontent and boredom, completely missed the blessing God had for me.
I was standing in the kitchen, stirring homemade yogurt with Daisy, our sweet and energetic host (and adoptive mother) for the month, laughing at the syringes that she was using to add the flavors to the yogurt (literal syringes with needles. The strawberry flavor looks like a murder scene). I began absent-mindedly humming Come Thou Fount, and it wasn’t long before Daisy was singing along with me. I sang in English, and she in Spanish (she speaks only a few English words). So we just smiled at each other in admiration of the amazing truth in the lyrics that we both knew the other was singing, then we kept stirring yogurt and the day continued moving forward.
When I first applied for the Race, I knew why I wanted to go. There were a million reasons, but there’s only one that applies to this moment, which the Lord knew when He carefully planned my interaction with Daisy. “To have my eyes opened,” I had explained, “to the beauty of God’s creation – His people of endless diversity…of different cultures, backgrounds, appearances – as they all worship one and the same God.” It was a desire the Lord had given me, to see His people as He sees them; beautiful, diverse, intricate. The beauty of His handiwork, bringing Him glory.??And so while I stood in the kitchen that day, still soaked in the negativity in which I had been stewing all week, performing what I felt was just one more mundane task, the Lord fulfilled a specific desire of my heart and I didn’t even notice. There I was, singing with a woman of an entirely different culture, praising the same God in two different languages and simultaneously regretting that I wasn’t getting out of the Race what I had hoped. As if the Lord didn’t know what He was doing when He brought me on this trip. As if He didn’t know what He was doing when He led me into this kitchen in Bolivia. If He has a gift for me in the mundane task of yogurt-stirring, I believe that He could just as easily have a gift for me in that shnasty green, gasoline paint that’s slowly coating my hands and shoes, and maybe even in every boring task I’m given this year.
I’m glad I initially missed the blessing that day, because God had a lesson for me, which is to keep my eyes open for Him. For His blessings. For His work. For his fulfillments of promises and desires. Because the moment I stop looking for Him is the moment I stop finding Him.
And so I want to encourage you: Don’t let the mundane wrapping fool you. God’s gifts for you are there if you only remember to look.
