The gentle breeze nudges me just enough that I sway ever so gently in the hammock I’m suspended in and turns the pages of the bible laid out on my stomach, one page at a time. My ears are filled by a symphony of crickets, frogs, insects I could never name and the occasional distant bark of a dog. As I look out from my perch on the second floor of the orphanage we’re staying in I can see fields and trees, gently lit by the nearly full moon, stretching out as far as I can see, broken only by a single hill of rock inexplicably placed in the midst of the flatness around it. The dull, satisfying ache of used muscles emanating from my shoulders reminds me that I was clambering up those rocks not 6 hours ago. The sting of a healing blister on my hand being touched by the breeze brings me back to a few hours before that when we were digging Cambodian potatoes out of a woman’s garden – some as big as my head! We ate them with sugar later on, a surprisingly tasty snack I’d have never thought to try. Suddenly a child’s laugh from somewhere in the house brings me back to the present, yet also invokes memories of playing sardines with the kids for the first time this afternoon, hiding behind bushes and chicken coups with hushed laughter together. These thoughts kind of trickle through my brain as I lay in complete peace, the wind rocking me slowly but surely to sleep, when a contemplative question intrudes on my mind’s wanderings: how on earth am I so blessed?
And how in the world did I get here? I mean, I got on a plane, followed by many busses and a few cars with a backpack full of clothes and other essentials, leaving my friends and family behind, but….who plans this sort of thing? Who plans to experience beauty and majesty in a place you have to carry your water from a well just to bathe? Where you eat rice 3 times a day and have electricity for only 4 hours at night, or where a trip into town, an hour’s drive away, to eat Mexican food becomes THE highlight of your week for which everyone dresses up (at least, as much as they possibly can while living out of a backpack)? But here I am, doing just that, and loving every minute of it. The kids, the food, the bucket showers, the physical labour, the lack of comforts – all of it. And the only thing I can think of as an answer is part of the message I shared at church on Sunday from John 10:10 – ‘The thief comes only to kill and steal and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.‘
This is the abundant life. The one that fulfills and does not run dry. You don’t have to come on a round the world trip to find it, this is just the abundant life God created me for. For some it’s working with street youth, others it’s being a pastor, for some it’s sharing the word of God in a non-Christian work environment. For some it’s all of the above or something completely different. But whatever God has laid out for your life, it’s yours for the taking. Getting it means stepping out and going where you don’t know what the end will look like, where you’re scared to death that it won’t turn out the way you want. See, He doesn’t give you a yearning or a calling so you can sit in timid fear of it not working out. The thing that makes your whole being say ‘Yes, this is what I feel complete doing’ is not something you’re meant to just do on the occasional weekend or once in your life – it’s there so you can serve God with it, and rely on Him to provide the means to do that. I think so many of us never take the chance because we think it’s just that, a chance, which means it could go horribly wrong. But we can never see the end from where we’re sitting because we wouldn’t be trusting God with it if we could, and He is so faithful and trust worthy. I dare everyone that reads this, if you’re not doing something with your life that makes you feel complete and you know there’s something else you’re called to, just go do it. Trust that God will look after the rest, because I tell you this life is too short to live it with timidity.
