I never thought I would EVER say this, but I really mean it – I wish I was back in Africa.
I’m sitting in a comfortable bed in a house in Chile, where there is hot water, electricity, Wi-Fi, a wood-burning stove, amazing home-cooked food, and a public bus that goes into town where you can find a grocery store, a McDonalds, and plenty of familiar snacks and treats.
So why the HECK would I ever want to be back in Africa?
Because it was hard.
Here in Chile, we have plenty of free time, we have lots of comfortable space to rest and relax, we sleep in late every day, we eat well. What’s the problem? What the heck am I complaining about? I know you must be thinking: There’s no way that is hard. I could do the World Race!
Right now, I’m feeling like life is too easy. I have it too cushy here.
But when life is easy, things get hard.
It gets hard to see God show up in the every day.
It gets hard to have the discipline to spend time in prayer and to read Scripture every day.
It gets hard to want to invest in my teammates around me.
Because it is so much darn easier to just watch Netflix. Or zone out in a book. Or sleep all day. Or do the endless Facebook scroll.
I kept finding myself wishing I was in Africa, because there I would have to rely on the Lord; I would be challenged daily simply by my living conditions to spend time in prayer, to give hard feedback, to love the people around me. The challenge of living day to day would push me more and more towards Christ.
But the reality is: I’m coming home.
To the United States of America. The most developed country in the world.
Where life is easy. Where you can microwave your food in two minutes, where you have the world at your fingertips through your iPhone at any moment, where you can sit at any restaurant and get a meal served to you while you update your Facebook status.
Where people have more stuff than relationships.
Where life is easy.
But when life is easy, it gets hard to do all the things that the World Race is all about.
It gets much harder to invest in community, invest in your church, invest in your relationship with the Lord, invest in something BIGGER than yourself, when life is easy.
But running away to Africa isn’t the answer, so I won’t be doing that.
In just a few short weeks, I’ll be coming home, right at the time of year when everyone stops everything to eat a lot and buy stuff (Thanksgiving).
Life will be easy, but things will get hard. But I want to choose the hard things in the midst of easy life.
Av erse I’ve dwelt a lot on this year has to do with a race:
“Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Hebrews 12:1-2
In these moments, when life is easy, I look to Jesus. Jesus, who left the cushiest of all places – the right hand of God – to have the hard life. And even on earth, He always chose the hard thing: He endured the cross, when He could have let us all be destroyed by our own sin. So now, we have the opportunity to choose the hard thing too.
So what will it be?
