Sweat, dust, heat, rice, beans, scorpions, pit toilets, sunburns, bucket showers –just part of my normal day. What I wouldn’t give for a Michigan winter to see snow and be cold instead of constantly hot. God bless the man who invented air conditioning. What I wouldn’t give for some good old American food. God bless the man who invented the cheese burger. It is now month 3 on the Race and the “honeymoon” has definitely worn off.
I gave up a lot of big things to come on the race. My family, friends, job, car, personal space, comfortability, and instant gratification. You never realize how good you have something until it is taken away. The American culture of instant assessability and gratification is something that I now really appreciate. To think that I could drive down a street and have my pick of any kind of restaurant or to walk through the supermarket and chose from any kind of food boggles my mind. Out here the selection is very limited and if it is not a canned item you can forget it. Oh and if you want to have a nice cold drink of ice water to relive some of the perspiration from your brow then I hope you have a good imagination because you won’t find it here.
But this is the very reason I signed up for the Race. To get over myself. The only thing I have left are the small things. An extra slice of bread, a little more shade, a few minutes to myself, a seat on a bus, or a nights rest without waking up to the roosters. I have learned it is much harder to give love when that may be the only thing I have left to give. It is easy to show love from the distance of comfort but hard to truly give love when you are giving out of yourself. Giving up an extra slice of bread to a hungry orphan or teammate becomes exceedingly harder when you are still starving.
It is in these moments that I am discovering who I am and who God wants me to be. I have been striped bare and my true colors are coming out. Praise God that I can’t hide from my character flaws anymore. I have be given a new perspective on what it must of been like to be God and then be come a man. Jesus was one crazy dude. I can’t imagine having divine powers and then deciding to give them all up to walk in a human body – feeling all the pains, temptations, and hurts of this world just to rescue a bunch double crossing humans (Philippians 2: 5-11). Thank you Jesus for coming to this earth. Thank you for giving up your comfort of heaven to come to earth and truly love us out of all you had left – your blood, sweat, tears, and death.
Lets remember this Christmas that Jesus’ birth was the beginning of God demonstrating his true love for us.
