“A man often finds his fate on the road he takes to avoid it.”
Who said that? I have no idea. So which path am I on? Am I here attempting to avoid my eventual fate or is this the path I’m supposed to be on? Where does this path go? What other paths are options?
Welcome to my brain.
The path ahead of me is unknown and unfamiliar. I don’t know what to expect or how to react to the things along the way because I don’t know what the way is.
I have been tempted to stand firm here in what I know and not take the next step. I have been tempted to stop doing this “missionary thing” and go home to where I can be something familiar. I have been tempted to give up a lifestyle of reaching out to homeless, widows, orphans, prostitutes, misguided and misfortune people and go back to the states where I can reason myself into believing my mission field is there with my comforts and past dreams. I have been tempted to stop trying to live off of a support based income while serving God in my calling and simply go back to a lifeless job so I can say, “I don’t need anyone else.” Such a significant portion of me desires to be self sufficient and independent from the rest of the world.
I have spent a lot of time trying to be things I’m not;
a salesman,
a handyman,
a mechanic,
a provider,
a leader,
a servant,
a savior.
I may have even succeeded at a few of those; I surely let some of them define me in the time of their existence. Yet each part of my past, my résumé, had a specific path which led to its existence, but where I am now, it was neither earned nor bought. I did nothing to get to this place.
One day I up and decided the best thing to do was quit my life and live for something greater. The something greater wasn’t earned, didn’t come with years of experience nor was it purchased with hard earned American Dollars. I have no qualifications for what I am doing or for the place I am headed.
Abba Father, God Almighty, YAHWEH, Jehovah, The I Am has given me a voice. But how do I speak to ears which don’t hear, with words I don’t know about secrets of the future?1 What the heck does that even mean?
Do I ride along on a coat tail or do I study more? Maybe I am supposed to just do and hope for the best. Riding coat tails only goes so far before you wear out the coat tail and you’re left on your bum watching the coat wearer meander off into something greater. Studying is a great way to gain knowledge, understanding and even wisdom but does very little in the ways of practice. No matter how much I study, memorize or understand it doesn’t necessarily give me the ability to be in my calling any more than I was before. “Hope for the best,” seriously? No, just no.
I can be Jesus cliché and use the saying, “God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.” Not to say this is any less true now than it ever has been, but there has to be something quantifiable to explain this. Or is that what I am here for? To learn there isn’t quantification to everything; some things just are.
So what is this path? What is on this path? Where does it go? I haven’t the slightest clue, but I know this is where obedience has led me.
I may not know what I want to do, but I know what I don’t ever want to do again.
As He leads me,
Jason
1 Exodus 3:14-15, Jeremiah 33:3
