It’s a very exciting time of year. Major League Baseball has begun Spring Training. Soon the season will be under way. The Braves have signed Derek Lowe and Garrett Anderson and this World Racer hopes this is the year they return to greatness.
In only a couple of months, however, Baseball will be in the thick of its 162-game season and many fans will be wondering where all the excitement went. Their favorite players will be on the disabled list and their team will have a 3-game lead in their division, inconsequential next to the 75 games remaining in the season.
Baseball has a long season. For a game like baseball, where the better team doesn’t win every game, I think it is a good system. Over 162 games, luck falls away and the best teams rise to the top. But somewhere in June and July the luster of April wears off. The newness is gone and you’re not yet pushing for the playoffs.
And that, my friends, is where I find myself lately. I knew that the Race was eleven months. I know God has called me to this season. Still, I’m finding that it’s a very long season.
In Kenya many of us processed through the realization that this is not simply a short-term mission strip. We realized that the World Race would be more than a quick shot in the arm for our faith. We saw that real change was in store.
Now I’m in month six, India, and I am finding that the Race is going to more than change the way I think about the Holy Spirit or give me a little better perspective on who God has created me to be. The Race is going to change my life. It’s going to change who I am – for good.
And the process is hard. It’s going to hurt – more than it has already. And that’s why I singed up for this thing. I wasn’t sure about traveling. I wasn’t sure what ministry would be like. I wasn’t sure about how raising support would work out. But I knew that I wanted God to change me. I wanted a different life than I was headed for.
This past Sunday marked the midpoint of the Race. I’m seeing how God has woken me up to a lot of what he wants to do with me. I know more of what it means to be, as Mike Hindes said, “a prophetically influenced pastor”. I feel like I could go home, find community, listen for how God wants to use me there, and help plant Kingdom. But if I’m completely honest with myself I would say that my life hasn’t been changed yet. I’d love to go home and grab some Arby’s curly fries, but God called me to eleven months for a reason. He must have more to do in me.
