Although I’ve handled being away from the comforts of home far better than expected, as we enter the seventh month of the Race, I have to admit that I’m beginning to long for home. One of the major things I’ve learned from this journey is that I’m incredibly blessed. Things that I’ve taken for granted my entire life are things that I now dream about.
Things like eating in a restaurant, hugging my parents, a hot shower and flushing my toilet paper all seem like a far off dream. So when a week ago at our six month debrief our wonderful squad parents, Jay and Denise, brought each team a tub of Jif peanut butter, it was as if they brought us a little piece of home. To say we are territorial of this peanut butter is an understatement. We’ve even gone as far as rationing it to make it last as long as possible.
Ministry this month is intense. As a team we’ve been talkingabout how to dig in and push for growth as much as possible, and we often pray to see and experience radical living. Well, this month we got our wish. Our host parents are the most radical people I have ever met in my life. They are so on fire for God that it puts us to shame on a daily basis. From the time we get up to pray with them at 4:30 am until we end the day with prayer and worship, they never rest from serving their community with a passion and fire that can only come from God.
And while it’s inspiring and humbling to be a part of their lives, there are very few moments of peace and quiet in the tiny two-room house we share with them. From the moment we wake, there are people constantly stopping in to say hello or ask for a word of encouragement.
On our first morning here, we were sitting at the table having breakfast as a team and Morgan brought out our precious peanut butter to give the bread some taste. It wasn’t very long before one of the people who had come to visit walked over, took the peanut butter and began eating it and sharing it with his friends. The shock on each of my teammates faces was hilarious to be honest – we each looked as though someone had just stolen our puppy.
None of us said a word, we just sat and stared at one another wondering what to do and in the end we did nothing. The next day, when we brought the peanut butter out, it happened again.
We’ve since talked about why we were so upset about this thing being taken away from us. We signed up for this year of abandonment – to live without all the things that make life “easy” because living for God is better. So why, after having given up so much, was it so hard to let go of this small thing?
We each saw in that instant how easy it is to revert back to old habits and old mindsets; because I think we often feel this way about many things in life. We see the things we’ve worked for or that have been given to us as our possessions, our rights. But the reality is that all we have is God’s and should be held loosely, ready to be let go of at any moment. Part of living radically is giving radically. Preferring others above ourselves and being willing to give whatever is asked is a way that we can live out our faith and show love to others – even if that means gladly giving away the very last of our precious Jif peanut butter.
