After spending less than five days in Cambodia, I can already tell that this month can easily be categorized as “a world racer’s dream month.” Though months have come and passed, each one offering varying degrees of conformity to or distance from my naive pre-race expectations of foreign mission work, I can truly say that this one is one of the few months that has been right on par with my pre-race expectations. We sleep in a hot, wooden, tree house, bathe using buckets of muddy water, and are accompanied by dogs, ducks, chickens, cows, and pigs on our property. We wear the same clothes every day and entertain ourselves by walking five minutes to the local “store” to buy forty-cent ice coffees in plastic bags. We enjoy watching the orange sun set over steep palm trees—a precursor to star-studded skies—and are surrounded by so many loving Cambodian children that our innate human thirst for affection never goes unfulfilled.
Month ten has more than started here in Kampot, our province in the southern part of the country. Though we have enjoyed celebrating the Khmer New Year with children’s ministry and games, and though I personally look forward to teaching school in a few days, I can definitely say that it takes a lot of willpower for me to remain “in the present”. The one thing that has had the power to keep me in the “here and now”, however, has been God’s pursuit of me.
It’s a funny thing—God’s pursuit of us—because we so often talk about our pursuit of God as if we’re the only party in the relationship that’s doing any pursuing. Sure, we pay lip service to the fact that it’s a two way relationship—though even this is usually said in the context of convicting us of our own personal responsibility—and sure, I think we probably know, deep down, that God truly does delight in us (Psalm 18:19), but I think we often characterize God as considerably less relentless a pursuer than he really is.
Friends, God does not play fair. This race, for me, has been first-hand proof that God will hound me down until I realize that he—alone—is what’s best for me. At our month eight debrief session, before our time in Malaysia started, we sang the song “You Won’t Relent” by Misty Edwards. One of the main lyrics of the song is, “You won’t relent until you have it all,” and that lyric has been my banner for the last month and a half now.
Godhasn’t relented and it’s been highway robbery, I tell you. This race—no, these two and a half years as a Christian—have been nothing but highway robbery. God has left me with nothing. I used to run track and cross country—until God, in his greed, decided he wanted that. I used to have a comfortable college environment until God took that away too. I used to have an iPod until God broke it twelve hours after I prayed for abandonment—bad prayer, by the way. I used to have my own computer until God broke that one, too, a few days ago—again, a matter of hours (not days, but hours!) after I prayed to God that he may go to any lengths to increase my prayer life. I used to have a watch, but God broke that, too—a day after I told him I wanted to stop thinking about how many days were left on the race. I used to have nice clothes, but they all are hanging by their last threads now. I used to have a car, but I haven’t driven in almost ten months. I don’t understand why God can just barge his way into my life and take whatever he wants, whenever he wants. But, in some crazy sort of way, (maybe) I like it.
And again, here is the intersection where Christianity parts ways with every other world religion and man-made system of morality. From Buddhism to Islam to Atheism to the entire realm of secular self-improvement, absolutely nothing similar is offered to a God who throws rocks at our window. Perhaps this notion of a love relationship is complete lunacy, but the one thing that it is not and will never be is interchangeable.
The only thing, however, that makes a love relationship with the creator God a little bit different than a human relationship, I have found, is that God can do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Anything less than this would be to posit that God somehow needs us—and God, as God, has never needed anything. God will throw rocks at your window—a spiritual foreplay, of sorts—but when God comes to your front door, he won’t wait until you answer. God, I learned, is not helplessly waiting on my beneficent reply. Rather, when God’s at your doorstep, he kicks down the door, guns a-blazing, and—rather unashamedly, I may add—announces: “I’m about to start cleaning house in here!”
So, to bring this full circle, God’s relentless pursuit of me—not because I’m anything special, but purely because he delights in extending love to nobodies, yes even former enemies—is what has helped me to battle constant thoughts of the next season. God is pursuing me now. His heavenly caravan has rolled through town and ransacked me—in a way I haven’t always expressed in blogs. And, as I walk through the loving desert—southern Cambodia does not lack hot sand—I can see, glimmering off in the distance, something much more real than a mirage—the same heavenly caravan is back. Once an object of destruction—a wrecking ball—is now an object of invitation: “Come away with me, come away with me. It’s gonna’ be wild, It’s gonna’ be great, It’s gonna’ be full of me.”
