It’s easy to find God in the memorable, in all those little moments in time that give us butterflies and stop us in our tracks. We sometimes feel these things during a song in the car, when someone we love shows up right when we needed them to. It’s not hard to find yourself catching your breath at the beauty of a hundred little lanterns on boats covering the water before you like a city’s shoreline bobbing up and down in the night. With your back on the lake sand shore and your eyes catching trails of stars as they travel the sky as you find yourself far away from the lights of the cities you’ve left behind. In this moment, surrounded by those that have seen every side of you over the past year, you know by the silence they find the same wonder as you see here in the moment. You feel the jolt of curiosity in the car rides along twisting mountainsides, embarking on the most wonderful and terrifying adventure of your life. In the nights sitting in an African compound in a power outage in the dark, sharing laughs by dim headlamp and eating cold carrots in vinegar. In the zipping of a tuk tuk through city lights. In coming face to face with one of God’s most majestic creatures and praying he doesn’t pounce. In the dancing in the rain in a tropical storm.
I’ve also learned to find God in the mundane. Sitting in the dirt with go-go’s of the village with your hands raised high. Joy found in the surprised smile of the man you pass on the street when you offer your hand in prayer. It is in the strangeness of the feeling that you’ve returned home when you leave your country and get back to 42 smiles and violent hugs (yes, Kelsey, that’s you.) In the value of a soul at rest amidst never knowing what day or time it is. In the beauty of the pain of the thousandth goodbye. In the familiar welcomed ache of the backpack on your shoulders. In the sweat that trickles down your head as you climb that dirt road in search of that village. In the creep to the squatty potty in the middle of the night; leery of the spiders and scorpions that seem to move, without fail, at the speed of light itself. In the songs of worships on a cold floor that bring me to my knees. In the familiar comfort of a hard bed in a bamboo hut. In the embrace of a child on a dirt road in Zambia, running as fast as her little legs can carry her to meet my arms. In a friend reaching over to grasp my hands when there are no words and home is so far away.
You see, you learn to find God here. You see enough hunger and pain and backwards worldy confusion to begin to see how blessed you are to ache when you land back in your home country and everything is moving too fast and everyone is too busy to understand what life was like, there. In the yearning for conversations to just be, more. You begin to value the dirt covered faces and women that open their tiny homes up to you for cola, and see how God is so brilliant and so wonderful to give you this moment to keep forever.
What’s even harder is to find God in the painful.
It’s hard to see the more difficult things the race has brought this year. It’s hard to walk past hungry children. It’s hard to watch abuse and neglect and not grab their hands and take every one of these precious people with you. It’s hard to walk into the Red Light District where a 12 year old girl is being sold to a man by the point of his finger to her picture in a line up. It’s hard to watch these women be coerced into a life of prostitution, or young girls sent away to sell themselves by their families who want the income she will send home. It’s hard to experience death in your family, and watch the suffering and confusion that comes with losing someone you love. Sometimes, it’s hard to find God here.
But He is here.
He is still good. He is still love. He is still worthy. If it brings me this much anger and pain to see the innocence and joy stripped away from these girls and boys, I can only imagine how much more the Father agonizes over His children. He is crying out for His church to rise up and live a life outside of themselves and the comfort of their own lives. And there is hope in that there are people that are out here, and back home supporting, that are willing to fight these things and be the love the world needs. The race has been hard, but God is still good, and now more than ever I want to be His instrument of love. Because we are called to be His hands and feet. Because the world needs it. Because in the end, all we take with us from this life into the next is our relationship with God and with each other. What will we have to show?
