As a realist, I’m trying to be really conscious of how I portray my Race to people who aren’t here to experience it themselves.
On my instagram, my Race is super rich, super fun, and super adventurous. It looks like a vacation that also happens to rewards my soul. Which I don’t want to completely throw out this idea. The World Race has lots of adventure and exploring of the world. Ministry is also really fruitful. The Lord works in crazy ways and it’s really humbling and mind boggling to get to be a part of it.
But every day is not an adventure. And miracles don’t happen on an hourly basis here. Most of the time ministry looks like a 9-4 job. We eat breakfast, catch a bus, and get there by 9 to clean out paint brushes and reorganize a closet. Sometimes we post on the Pan de Vida Facebook, and sometimes we sweep and mop the entire house. Then we go home at 4, eat dinner and have team time and go to bed. There is a lot of mundane, a lot of routine, within the adventure and the richness of life with Jesus- just as there is in life at home.
This week I was sick. On the Race you get sinus infections and weird stomach bugs just like at home. You stay in bed and go to the doctor and take medicine. Just like at home.
Sure the doctor might not speak english and diagnose you with Pharyngitis and give you a narcotic in the form of a cough syrup, what else could you expect from an Ecuadorian clinic? And ok, maybe at home you don’t have to go the hospital to get an accurate diagnosis and some real meds.
BUT, the concept is the same.
Life on the Race looks a lot like life at home, and I never want to portray it as something that it’s not.
I miss my friends and I miss my family. I seriously am craving a Heath Blizzard from Dairy Queen and I miss my home church and I wish that my mom could make me some chicken noodle soup.
But doing life with Jesus always looks like an adventure, and requires sacrifice to gain so much more than we could imagine. Sometimes we sacrifice the comforts of The Flower Mound and sometimes we sacrifice traveling around the world. But it’s obedience that results in the real adventure, in the real richness of living life. Through obedience, we can see healings in a grocery store or raise money to send refugees to their families or build a house for a family in need. None of that is dependent on our physical location or our desire to be somewhere we’re not.
Our hope, our joy, our thrill, our adventure, our peace, our miracles- it all happens where our feet are planted.
So I never want someone to look at my blog or look at my instagram and think “Dang, I wish I was there so I could experience the Lord more or experience more excitement”.
No, I want them to be encouraged, to say “Dang, the Lord does cool stuff through obedience. I want to be a part of that.”
Be a part of the work that the Lord is doing. That’s where you’ll find abundant life.
