about 8 months or so ago, i was in the dominican republic on my first missions trip in a very long time. its strange and divine at the same time how that happened. because if you know me, i definitely wouldn’t be the first to raise my hand for any missions trip. why you ask? because i thought that missions isn’t for the weak of heart, weak of conviction, or any kind of weakness for that matter. i’ve grown up with this picture in my head of what a “christian” or a “missionary” in this case is supposed to look like. the kind of person that lives and walks and talks like they are breathing different air. my feeling was i’m just too human, broken, and normal. but God doesn’t see what we see, does He? He doesn’t have all those neat little compartments, boxes, definitions that we have for ourselves and for Him. to Him, they don’t even exist and actually He loves using people that are too human, broken, normal, and you fill in the blank.
so during my week in the dr with my youth group kids, there was a sermon that was given that has echoed in me since. the passage was the one where peter walks on water. the pastor said, everyone looks at peter and laughs at him. ‘what a fool, what a failure’, people say. but the surprising thing is that there were other apostles in the boat. but out of all of them only peter told Jesus to call him out. Jesus did, peter walked only for a moment, but he walked on water. most of my life has been either calculated risks or calculated safety. i’ve always had an out. one foot in the door, one foot out. as the pastor preached, God spoke into my life. the pastor challenged us to step out of the boat. the thought made me nauseous. and then he said something that made me stop. one man stepped out of the boat, and the world has never been the same.
With the world race, God has called me out of my boat and out of my wilderness. my self-proclaimed, voluntary wilderness. and for me, stepping off of that plane into the Atlanta airport was one of many first steps out of the boat with no life jacket, no road map, no person to cling to, no floaties around my arms. and He welcomed me out of the boat with this amazing, overwhelming, weird peace and calm. and i knew there was no way that it could be me because i had been very much unexcited about the whole training camp thing. which i could tell, by how i kept procrastinating packing my bag for gainsville, ga.
in the recesses of my mind, i had this distinct feeling that God was going to do something at training camp. something good, but something i knew was going to be painful and that i wasn’t ready for. oh and He did. there were things, pushed back and away, hidden and rotting that God brought into His light. and i felt like i could breathe for the first time in a long time as I was reminded of the truth of what the Lord sees, thinks, says, does. He can’t be fully known, He can’t be grasped, and we trust Him because of what the cross tells us about what kind of God He is. Good, patient, loving, gracious, merciful…He cleans up our barf after we eat and drink all kinds of junk that make us sick. He is beautiful and worthy.
(forgive me for my ramblingness, i feel like i just broke all the aim blogging etiquitte we were trained in)
