Today felt hard. I was in a funk and I couldn’t pin down what exactly was wrong. I just knew that I felt off.
We spent the afternoon walking around Filandia praying for the people and the places that we have all fallen in love with in the last few weeks. While walking around we saw multiple kids that we know and they greeted us with warm smiles and hugs. They laughed and gave us grace-filled confused faces while I stumbled through a sentence about bikes in Spanish (communication has been quite the learning process.)
Filandia is so sweet and so beautiful. Evidence of the Lord’s craftsmanship is so visible everywhere you look. Every mountain top, every sunset, every smile on a strangers face screams of the Creator. He is so present here but still so unknown.
The people of Filandia are so welcoming to us. They stand outside their shops or homes and greet us as we walk by; they will stop, hold your hand, share kind words and a genuine smile. It is incredible. Tonight I was laying in my bed trying to figure out why I felt so off and it occurred to me that I don’t want to be who they see when they look in my eyes.
The last few weeks I have been reading 2 Corinthians 4 daily and I am learning so much about what it means to be a jar of clay, beautifully broken but overflowing with treasure. I am so blessed to be a chosen daughter of the King of kings and I don’t ever want to keep that hidden.
I want the Lord to break off every piece of me that doesn’t declare his glory. I want to embrace the fact that I am outwardly wasting away so that his presence can be seen. I want the life of Jesus to be revealed in my body, my smile, my actions, my words, my everything. I want to hug that child and I want them to feel a love so out of this world that they need to know more. I want to hold that store owners hand, look in their eyes and show them Jesus. I want strangers to pass me on the street and recognize me as not only a foreigner to their country but to this world. I want the gospel of Jesus to be so evident in my life that it is visible from the outside.
My desire is to shed every of piece of clay that prevents Jesus from being seen.
So I am going to embrace the difficult moments of pruning. The moments I am hard-pressed. The moments I am perplexed. I will fix my eyes on what is unseen.
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” 2 Corinthians 4:16
