I missed the sunrise again.
Translation: I missed an opportunity.
I missed seeing the way the sun peeks over the mountains to awaken the day and spread light into the world. I missed ushering in the universal sign that there’s hope because another day has come. I woke up to take my next breath hours after the day began, and I missed it.
I wonder how many opportunities I miss because I’m busy satisfying my flesh. I’m busy doing things that feel good rather than taking opportunities that only come once. Today’s sunrise will never come again, and I chose to sleep through it, like many mornings before.
I miss opportunities because I sleep through life or I rush through it.
I miss opportunities because of fear that the light will expose the darkness that I sometimes try to hide in or because the light will help grow the places that have remained idle and bring new responsibilities with the gifts that are being given new life.
I miss opportunities because I have been taught to live in a performance-based poverty or orphan mindset of earthly resources when my Father invites me to drink from a well that He dug and that supplies abundance.
I miss opportunities because I’m taught that I must make a name for myself, that I must earn a fortune; that to be something in the world I must have a house, debt and a 401K, building up treasures on Earth rather than in heaven.
I find that at times there is the temptation to be turned away from the needs of others to build up status quos. I find that there is temptation to hoard the blessings I’ve been given to help myself progress and leave others to find their own way. I find that so often we choose money over life.
I was chatting with a friend the other day, telling her my dreams of breaking generational patterns and aiding in overcoming the poverty cycles long-term in Africa. She looked at me and asked a single question: “How do you define poverty?” Just by the one question, my entire paradigm shifted. In order to help eradicate poverty, I had to define what it was that I wanted to see gone.
In the past I would have defined poverty as the absence of sufficient funds or means of support. Though to a degree poverty still encompasses this definition, I have also found that it holds so much more. In other countries, I have found that with the absence of monetary means and with very little material items to hold onto, these people have something that so often lacks in my own life: faith. They have this incredible trust in the Lord and the promises that He has set before them. They have nothing in the way of their view of Christ because He is the only constant they can depend on.
I wanted to see children able to get an education in order to achieve the incredible dreams that I heard many times throughout my time in Africa. I wanted them to have an education in order to get a decent job so that they can provide the means for an education for their own children and start ending the poverty cycles that they are stuck in due to all levels of schooling costing families money they don’t have. I wanted to see generational poverty cycles end.
After pondering the question my friend asked, I now have a fear that by helping them with education and therefore monetary gain, I will be aiding in a new crisis that I fell subject to growing up. Having very little in these countries, they have very little to lose. They consider everything they have a blessing from Christ and are grateful to give what they have away to bless others. When one has much to gain, they have much to lose, and tend to hoard the blessings that they work for rather than giving with a joyful heart. They hold onto what they believe is theirs because they earned it.
I feel like many fall into this trap of “I earned this, and you should figure out how to also.” Though I understand this mindset, I also disagree with it to a very large degree. Though we put our efforts into something, the results were never ours in the first place. We tend to look at what we have done rather than what’s been done for us. We tend to look at our gains as rewards for hard work rather than blessings that were given to us by Christ that we didn’t deserve.
My mindset of the future is shifting. I still want to help aid in the eradication of generational poverty, but my approach is going to look a little different. Education is still a huge resource that will be used, but the primary resource is Christ. We must know where life comes from before we can go after it and give it away.
I don’t want to miss another opportunity. I want to wake up and let the sun kiss my skin and breathe life into me. I want to shine that same light each day and show others that there is abundance so that they too can live in it and give it away.
