I’m currently on a train headed for Odessa,
Ukraine, and my final month on the World Race. We arrived in Chisinau, Moldova
yesterday morning, and I haven’t been able to shake the chill from my bones
yet. I just went in the W.C. and saw my breath for the first time since last
March. It’s been over a year of pure summer, with sweat, humidity, and heat
indexes over 130 degrees at times. But it seems things are changing.
I found it kind of ironic that I’m seeing
something I haven’t in a long time… in a way it’s as if time is finally
catching up to me. On the WR we like to call it the “time warp.” At
times minutes seem to trickle by ever so slowly; other times a month flies by
and you feel you just blinked. We feel as if we are going to step off the plane
back home in 35 days and the world is going to pick back up where we left it,
even though this entire time our world back home has kept spinning in our
absence.
When I saw my exhalation visibly in front
of my face just a second ago I realized that this is it; this is my last chance
at giving myself to the world, at least for this particular season of my life.
The choice has always been there, though it seems even more prevalent right
now: will I leave anything on the table, or will I board that plane at the end
of next month, and know that I put myself out there and didn’t hold anything
back?
Bob Dylan wrote, “these times they are
a’ changin,” and how true that is. The shift has started, from worlds-apart-missionary
to just another one of 30,000 college students, in just a couple months. This
time around, I will not just be a number, another lukewarm kid with the title
Christian, but rather a bruised and tried disciple, ready to bring the Kingdom
to Middle Tennessee.
Until that shift is finalized, I have 25
days of ministry to bring down some Heaven into the Ukraine, and that is where
my head is; please join me in praying in this final chapter of my race; for a
strong finish and a strong beginning to the next chapter.
