As our time in Thailand comes to close I begin to reflect upon the month. Oh wait, no I don’t have much time for that because we’ve been planting cassava fields 12 hours a day with lunch being brought out to us in the fields so we can get more work done. It’s hard work, kind of. I mean how many thousands of cassava sticks can you stick in the ground in scorching sun or pouring rain? It’s the heat and long hours that get to us.
I look out on the next field we have to plant… good freaking night that’s a big field, maybe the size of two football fields. “You mean he wants us to plant this field too?” The task seems impossible, but we’ve planted large fields before and I’m slowly beginning to learn that though the task seems daunting there will come a point when we will look back on it in triumph. With this in mind, I stab the first stick into the field and, already being worn out from the previous field that day, I repeat in my mind as I work my way up the field, “Just keep stabbing… Just keep stabbing…” to the tune of Dora’s song, “Just keep swimming…” from Finding Nemo. Indeed, that’s all I have to do is remain focused on the task immediately at hand — stabbing only the next stick into the ground — and the daunting task slowly crumbles under the inexorable force of persistence. The ten of us who are working the field finish the job later that day.
As a good Christian (lol) I translate the lesson of this mundane task into a lesson for life. You see, Jesus pretty much tells us to worry only about one day at a time: the day called Today. He knew that when we consider the big picture and try to fathom all the variables of our entire life we often succumb to a daunting feeling about all the things we’ll need to handle later on. But if we can keep focused on worrying only about today, we can probably be much more relaxed!
Not only this, but I was also applying the lesson to doing kingdom work (or any work for that matter) once I return from the race. I really enjoyed my time in China, I think because that’s the first month where discipling others was the main focus. “Just keep going to english corners, just keep inviting people over, just keep initiating those deeper conversations, just keep asking people if they want to study the bible with you…” and we saw results! So keeping that same mindset of “if you want something that seems big just keep focused on persisting in little steps and eventually you’ll get it” is going to be a focus of mine after the race.
This month we also herded goats, and as I watched some of the workers herding them I noticed that the way to keep goats behaving is to whack ’em with sticks, box them in until their only way out is the way you want them to go, stay outside of their group and clap and shout and pelt them with stuff to get them to move, sometimes wrestle them by their horns… goats are stubborn, or ignorant, creatures. And all we want to do is keep them from getting lost and take them out to pasture and back into their goat-house! Well, doing the “good Christian” thing, I abstracted this lesson into a life lesson and took into account bible verses concerning goats and sheep. Sheep follow the shepherd and only need to listen to his voice to follow. Then I thought about how God might relate to a person who would behave like a goat behaves to us. I’m sure that to the goats, we are a terror, but to a sheep we are the guide to safety and good pasture. The difference in the relationships between goat and master and sheep and master only arises because of the way the animal behaves. God, help me to be a sheep!
Anyways, in recent news we’ve made it safely into Malaysia for our final month of the world race! Also, the remaining balance left on my world race account is $4,077 which I’ll have to pay on May 15th unless I get some help from you guys! Any amount you can give always helps! Thanks and God bless!
