It’s the end of the first month of the World Race.
It’s hard to believe that this month is over. My team has had such a wonderful experience in Costa Rica, it’s baffling to realize this is only one month out of eleven. Each person we built a relationship with here feels as intrinsic to this journey as my own team. To imagine that I’ll have small pieces of my heart in people all over the world is a feeling I can’t find words to describe. I guess you could say it feels like I’ve found home in a million different faces.
I’ve been taking a lot of pictures this month (which, if you follow me on Facebook you should know), because everything around me is so fascinating. Towering mountains. Lush fields. Low flying clouds. Colorful markets. Tropical birds. Strange fruits. Sunny skies. Smiling faces.
There’s just so much to see here. In fact, most of the time on long bus rides I spend just looking out the window, watching scenery go by that I’ve never seen before in the States. Scenery I may never see again. How beautiful it is to know that the world is far richer, sweeter, wilder, stranger, and more wonderful than anything I can capture in one short moment.
God taught me to see in Costa Rica.
But it wasn’t in the way I expected.
This month, my team engaged in a random assortment of ministries. We painted walls, we poured cement, we prayer walked, we shoveled dirt, we directed cars, we sang songs, we taught lessons, we laid sod, we cooked food, we prayed for children and female inmates, we cleaned homes, we marched in a parade, and we explored with eyes wide open. But strangely, looking back on all the little things we did in this short time span, it almost seems like our work didn’t amount to much of anything at all.
Right off the bat, I was eager to see God do some crazy things. Entering into the women’s correctional facility, I saw this as an opportunity to introduce these women to the love of Jesus. But we didn’t get that opportunity. We instead painted a wall. And while I’m sure the people of the correctional facility appreciated this freshly painted wall, almost no visitor passing by would say “Wow, what a nice shade of tan. This must have been painted by some children of God.”
Many times, our daily ministry didn’t feel that significant. Moment to moment, ministry seemed surprisingly unremarkable for a missions trip that waves the banner of Adventure. It was easy to feel like what we were doing was nothing the Kingdom of God really needed. Painting a house or scraping cement off a wall doesn’t enhance the Kingdom in the way that preaching a sermon or praying for the sick would. What good is one encounter with another human if it doesn’t lead to prayer or sharing the Gospel? Can anyone really do any good here in such a short amount of time?
I wanted to bring Kingdom into the darkness this month. But that’s not what God was asking for.
God was asking me to see.
My awesome storytelling mentor gave me an encouraging word a couple weeks ago. “It’s not our responsibility to bring Kingdom. It’s our responsibility to find it. Because the Kingdom is already there”.
God was not asking me to see darkness or futility. God was teaching me to see the Kingdom that was already there. To see that the wall we painted was a sign to the women of the correctional facility that He cared about them. To see that the grass we laid was a gift to the church who prayed for extra hands. To see that the house we painted showed the family who owned it that God knows their needs.
But even though I began to learn how to see things through the eyes of Heaven, God still had more teach me.
A couple nights ago, amid a long church service given in a language I didn’t have the energy to translate, God spoke to me.
“Jonathan, the eyes you’ve been given are my eyes. What you see, I see. Every person I put in your path, every person you see with your physical eyes – this person is someone that I see.”
In preparing for a missions trip as grand as this one, it’s easy to see ministry in one country as a ministry to the entire country itself. Who would’ve thought that God would send me and my team all the way from the United States, just to one family. Just to paint their house. Just because God SEES them.
Every country I go to this year, I go as a physical vessel of the Holy Spirit. Whether or not I get to show off my amazing giftings, or my winning personality, or my alluring charms (stop snickering…), God is going to call me to specific places at specific times, just to show people who feel unloved or unwanted that He sees them.
How radical it is that this whole World Race is actually God’s race around the world to pursue His lost creation. How crazy it is that the most beautiful things I see this year are not the radiant sunsets or mountaintop vistas, but the smiling face of someone who is seen by the God of the Universe. How fulfilling it is that God doesn’t do this while no one is looking, but instead puts me behind the wheel and lets me see what He sees through my own eyes.
My final week in Costa Rica, two of my teammates and I were walking down the street on the way to the supermarket, when a man approached us.
“American?” We nodded.
“Christian?” We nodded.
He smiled. “I see Jesus in your eyes. I see Jesus in your heart. I see Jesus in your body”.
This man didn’t know us from Adam, and yet what He saw in us was more important than what we saw in ourselves. Regardless of all of my insecurities, or my striving to please, or my need for affirmation, this man didn’t see Jonathan in my eyes.
He saw Jesus.
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.” Psalm 139:1-3
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Check out this video montage from our montage in Costa Rica!
