As Switchfoot says:
Sunshine won’t you be my mother?
Sunshine come and help me see.
My heart is darker than these oceans
My heart is frozen underneath.
We are crooked souls trying to stay up straight
Dry eyes in the pouring rain
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine
God is the definition of love and goodness. And, as humans, when compared to that perfect picture of goodness, we fall tragically short of that glorious goodness we were originally made for.
A recent topic of conversation has been the discovery of just how short we all fall from that glory without even realizing it. That is why I KNOW I need Jesus. I knew I needed Jesus before I came on this trip, and yet, before the World Race I think I must have believed that I was in a category of people who didn’t need quite as much grace as the rest of humanity.
My eyes are now opened to the true darkness of all human hearts.
Imagine that you haven’t taken a shower in 5 days and the only way to bathe yourself is to use a baby wipe. Then, your teammate, who is in the same situation as you, asks to use one of your baby wipes. You immediately think ‘how many baby wipes do I have left? I don’t know when I’ll be able to buy more, or IF I’ll be able to buy more. What if I give away this baby wipe and then I run out?’ Instead of, ‘yes, of course you can have one.
Imagine 10 of you have slept on the floor for 30 days straight and then you are given three beds. You immediately think, ‘how can I get to sleep in one of those beds?’ instead of giving up one of the beds to your teammate willingly.
Imagine that you get $3 per day to eat and someone asks you for a scoop of your peanut butter. Your mind immediately goes to ‘no, you can’t have any of MY peanut butter’ and it’s a lot harder to say yes.
My point is that when you have a whole house full of beds and couches, a hot shower, a source of income, a car and the convenience of going to a 24-hour Wal-Mart for anything you may need or want, it’s a lot easier to give of those things because you can always sleep on a different bed or couch, you can hop in your car to go to the store and buy more peanut butter and you usually never have to worry about sharing baby-wipes because you can just let your friend use your shower. Even if they use all the hot water, it will usually be warm again in 30 minutes.
So, before this trip, I thought that I had at least began to master the art of being selfless. The truth is, that God has blessed me tremendously, giving me the ability and appearance of sometimes being selfless, but underneath “my heart is darker than these oceans”. Our true dark, sinful nature proves that there is goodness (which I believe that God is). The shadow we walk around in proves that there has to be sunshine somewhere, or it wouldn’t be a shadow. Just like you would never enjoy a sunny day if you only have sunny days and no cloudy ones to compare one to. It would just be another day. The same holds true for cloudy days – you would never know that it was a ‘cloudy’ day. You would just think it’s another day until the sun comes out and shows you there is something different.
I believe this is further proof for those of you unbelievers as well. Think about all of the pain in the world that we walk around in because we don’t give a second thought as to how the creator of the universe intended for it to be, we don’t even realize that there is a better way! Maybe that’s why there is so much pain in the world, we all walk around in the shadow and never realize that there is sun.
I’ve heard it said that the light of the world is Jesus, but we wouldn’t need light if we were ok this way. We all walk in darkness until we chose to walk into the light. I have to wake up every day (now especially) and decide to walk in the light instead of letting my own darkness defeat me. I want to give up that bed for my teammate, give away my last baby wipe and the whole jar of peanut butter. Jesus said in Luke 4:4 “People do not live by bread alone”. I can substitute the word ‘bread’ for any of those three things. He said this while being tempted by satan in the wilderness for 40 days. He hadn’t had a thing to eat the whole time! Even on our small budget, I get to eat every day and it’s still difficult for me to be generous. I can only pray as I move onto Africa, Asia and re-enter my ‘normal’ life, that I can keep fighting this dark nature and become a more Christ-like version of Kendra.
