So this is it. I’ve made it through 6 months of the World Race and traveled halfway around the world to over 7 countries… what is my life?
While traveling I’ve read the hunger games, re-read love does, studied proverbs and jumped into this squad leading thing. I’ve been trying to get a handle on my life; to have enough time to breathe before getting to the next thing, next country or next thought. But of course, that doesn’t ever happen in this life.
Through the craziness when I’ve found myself just sitting, walking, driving, showering and other odd places I’ve been thinking a lot about what this life means and what we’re meant to do. It’s funny, in the small moments, the ones that seem so insignificant in the midst of each day , I can have the most profound thoughts. And then they’re gone, consumed by the rest of the noise in my life. But this thought stuck out.
Maybe it’s because I read the hunger games trilogy in a week and so my blood is stirred for excitement and a good fight for what I believe in to save someone else and humanity. Maybe it’s because I adore Bob Goff’s radical lifestyle, using his crazy love to DO things to transform the world. Maybe it’s because I’ve been studying proverbs and somehow life’s choices seem so much simpler in the words on the page. Do this. Don’t do this. Really stay away from this and always remember to love God and others. Simple.
But I find myself completely rocked by these ideas. That these things composed together make up the longing of my heart, the things I wish to be a part of and what I feel I was created for. No, I’m not in the hunger games, and my lifestyle doesn’t permit me to be as radical as Bob Goff and although proverbs is simple, I make a hundred simple mistakes a day. Yet I still have found myself challenged by these things in the midst of my world, my world which covers 3 continents & 11 language barriers. I might not be able to use a sword, a bow and arrow or overthrow an evil government, but I have the will in me to fight against other things. I can fight against mediocrity, normalcy, stagnant christianity, and I can challenge others. I can save my friends and family as well. I can love others more than myself. I can choose to live life really SEEING people, stopping and soaking in the moment of two lives intersecting even if only for a moment. I can choose to love with a smile. I can use a kind of love that works as a weapon against this life- a love that DOES things and CHANGES things. I can live out my life with simple proverbs instructions.
These things and many more are just examples of the ways I have been called to live. What I’ve found to be the most remarkable is that God was working on these things all along. He desires to fight for His people, He desires for a love that changes things- and He is that love. All He wants from us is to participate. I can read the hunger games, Love Does and Proverbs, but if it doesn’t change me then they’re only good stories. But when I choose to open my eyes to the things around me that are in need of someone to step up and change, then I have the choice to continue to sit back and watch or to step in and fight. The greatest part about choosing to step up is I don’t have to do it alone. I’m ordinary, nothing special, underqualified and a huge mess, but choosing to DO something sets me apart, and I don’t have to do it alone.
Mission trips, vacations, time with friends & family or a trip to the supermarket- pick who you are and what you’re fighting for every day and make the change in the every day ordinary. He just wants us to jump in.
