People will tell you there are many different ways that the World Race is hard. The current and alumni Racers that I’ve related to have experienced it to be challenging in terms of homesickness, exhaustion, lack of amenities, lack of control, lack of freedom, abandonment of self, intense community-living, broken hearts from experiences in ministry, and beyond. Everyone’s race is different in the way the Lord breaks them of comfort and lovingly teaches us complete reliance on Him.
Another challenge I myself have experienced is my lacking awareness of reality. Being a Month-9 Racer has seasoned me to the adjustment of moving from country to country; every four weeks I pack up my backpack, hop on a bus/train/tuk-tuk and move along to the next destination. I’ve always been a lover of travel, a sweetheart of culture, a disciple of change. But being on the Race I’ve found it to be a struggle to maintain the wonder of this world we live in. I’ve experienced God’s creation, the beauty of diversity all over the globe, yet I somehow forget how to marvel at the simple state of my location.
This morning I woke up in Wiang Pa Pao, a small town in the northern hills of Thailand. I walked out of my room and opened the porch doors which open to a grandeur of layered hills in the distance. I didn’t even look up. I turned around, went back inside and starting heating water for my NesCafe instant coffee.
Later on, crunching on buttered toast, I was reading in Psalms. I came across a passage in Psalm 144, in which David requests of God…
“touch the mountains so that they smoke,”
This verse hit me like a gust of holy wind. My mind and heart recognized the beauty in the imagery of David’s words, imagining God’s finger brushing the tops of mountains and igniting them with billows of fog.
For the record, this hardly ever happens for me. I’m learning to be, but for the majority of my life I haven’t been especially “awed” by scripture. Routinely I’m more of an underliner, prone to come back to a passage by way of Holy Spirit motivation, and then hear Jesus speak to me through it. This, though, is a story for another day.
Sipping my coffee I continued journaling, noting the stark contrast between my connection with scripture today verses most other days. A while later my teammate, Hannah, grabbed me up off the couch. She put “There Will Be Time” by Mumford and Sons on a portable speaker and reminded me of the verse I had read about smoke on the mountains. She reminded me of the prayers for me to again wonder and marvel at the fact that we are in Thailand, resting because it’s our day off, able to gaze at the glory of a rainy mountainside, sharing in the prestige of our God’s creation!
I walked outside and burst into tears. The smoke was swept across the tips of the hills, an exact representation of the imagery written in that Psalm. I was in reverent wonder, for the first time in a long time. Thank you, Jesus.
Moving from day to day, seeking the Lord in each circumstance in order to grow into the person He wants you to be, it’s easy to forget to slow down and see the beauty in just being. I’m learning how to meditate on the goodness of Him without being distracted by the intentionality I seek in growing more like Him, because as I let Jesus love me, I also let Him mould me. We often try to make growth happen for ourselves and forget how to let him grow us in other ways, like sitting and letting him love us with foggy mountain peaks. May we never lose our wonder.
