Today is Wednesday and I am once again sitting at Pop Up, my teams’ ministry site from last month. A couple of days ago my team leader, Rich, and good friend and fellow J159er, Vanessa, boarded a bus back to Pretoria because I had a small medical emergency that we needed to get checked out. It took the bulk of Monday for us to get back to the place we had just left the week prior and we all wondered aloud why God was bringing us back so soon, even though we were all happy to return.
Last month’s ministry site was amazing. Sure, we were sleeping on the floor and packing and repacking our stuff almost every single day… sure, it was loud living with three other teams and sharing space and meals and hot water, but the blessings we received through our contact and his friends were utterly amazing. All four of the teams that got to stay at Pop Up continually talked about how we didn’t feel like we were even on the Race because of how we were cared for and loved. We had prepared ourselves for living in tents and peeing in holes and instead we were taken to a rhino and lion park and to a lake and served extravagantly. It almost feels weird to upload pictures from these things because they aren’t the pictures I thought I’d take. All these wonderful things are true, but it is also true that there were difficult things that came during this first month of ministry. We did hold orphans. It was hard to live out of a backpack and literally repack it every single morning. Hot water is precious and going last in the shower is not fun. P.S. It is dang cold in South Africa at nights and when we did have to sleep in our tents, I really thought I was going to freeze to death. Those things were hard, but the goodness of what we were given far outweighed any difficulty that came over the month and made any hardship seem insignificant in light of all of the blessings we enjoyed.
I love that the Cross and the gospel do the same. They far outweigh every hardship, every circumstance, every death, every hurt, every unknown and every suffering. The gospel is better and far more weighty than anything else in life – it speaks a final word over creation and all that put their trust in Christ. I love this because when suffering comes – and it will – what we choose to turn to matters. If the gospel is better than life, when death comes, it is but a shadow… even though it hurts terribly. If the gospel is better than riches, poverty cannot make a man truly poor since all that is worth anything is found in Christ. If the gospel is better than health or peace or a life filled with all the good things this world offers, should these things fall away, Christ never will. If the gospel and its goodness are your hope and anchor, then even when circumstances change, its goodness still calls to the hurting heart to come, rest and be cared for.
When my team made the decision that I needed to get checked out by a doctor, my heart wanted to go back to where I knew I would be cared for with extravagance. I wanted to know that the person that was taking me to the doctor knew the way and the best person to see and how to save me money since the hospital at our current location would have required that I pay everything up front and that if I ended up on the bathroom floor that they would come in a moment’s notice. Rich, Vanessa and I were welcomed into the home of our former contact. We were fed dinner and given beds to sleep in. We sat around a table into the wee hours of the morning with our Bibles open, encouraging one another in the truth with this man and his wife, all while eating homemade banana bread. And once again I thought, “Is this the Race?”
I am learning to know and rest in the fact that these things are dim pictures of the gospel. If and when it gets bad on this thing called the World Race or later in life, returning to what I know is sure and certain – the gospel – will always speak louder than any suffering that finds me.
P.S. All is well with me and our current ministry site where the rest of J159 remains is beautiful and a blessing that we are looking forward to reconnecting with soon!
