Why? Why leave for an entire year? Why leave an amazing job? Why leave your family? What about your relationship? What about the youth ministry you work with? What about bills? Why go on the world race for an entire year?
I think the better question is Why Not??
It’s easy for people to get behind a young person who has a dead end job and little to lose by leaving their home for a year. But a 26 (27 when I leave) year old with a full-time job at a fortune 100 company? You get questioned and looked at as foolish. Excuse me BUT:
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.” – Matthew 6:25-28
When we get into the thick of our lives where responsibilities fall on our shoulders, and it is no longer our parents but ourselves that determine stability in our life (finances, shelter, food, etc), as humans we tend to push aside the wild, reckless dreams that are embedded into our hearts and follow security. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, because we need to be wise and diligent in the blessings of our lives.
But when those responsibilities overshadow the quiet whisper of God’s call on your life, you have sold yourself short. We are children of God first and foremost and He loves us. If/When He calls us out to the unknown, He won’t let us fall. We have to remember that EVERYTHING – every job, opportunity, home, check – comes from Him. He supplies all our needs. And we are to hold everything He gives us with open hands, trusting in the Supplier and not the supply.
So why am I going on the World Race? Why am I choosing to leave everything behind? Because He said so. Because He’s been training me to simply obey when He tells me to move (or stay). And I trust Him. I have no clue what my year of living out of a backpack is going to look like, nor do I know what my life is going to look like when I return. But we are Christians. And to follow Christ is not to live a life of certainty, but a life of faith.
So here I go. The gun has sounded and I’m off to run with perseverance my race that was marked out for me fixing my eyes on Jesus and nothing else.
