It is easy to get lost in an image. You sit on a bench in a museum with freshly swept floors and quiet halls and there before you is a painting—a grand masterpiece that someone else produced. You stare at it. You are enraptured. As an amateur artist yourself, you imagine the brush strokes it took to create the hills, the sea, the faces, the abstract lines. Imagine the hours of mixing colors and paints to get that divine shade of blue. Imagine the ache in the artist’s hand and the stillness of the studio and the simple sound of paintbrush to canvas. You are caught up to another realm of thought, one that is a mix of consecration and awe.
Quick as your ascent began, find yourself sinking back down. You are pulled back to this temporal, perishable plane that is reality. You did not do that. You are not that artist. The artist is likely in a cemetery now, long dead, and you sit before their life’s work and realize the insignificance. It’s meaningless. Something in you turns sour. You recognize the futility, sense it in your very being.
I don’t think I’ve ever lived as much in my entire life as I am living today. I’ve done things before. I’ve experienced, had adventures. I’ve lived. But, I’ve never lived like I’m living right now. Before, days turned into weeks and sometimes months without any feeling of significance. Now, it’s only been four out of the eleven months of this trip and I feel as though lifetimes have been lived in the passing of a few short months. There’s never been more meaning in my today.
Still, in what should be the brilliant light of my present state, there is a dull droning of meaninglessness. I see people from my squad performing incredible acts of faith and love and mercy, evident with the power of Jesus, and I promptly look to my own insignificance. At times, it is hard to look around and praise Jesus. I prayed a prayer before I left the States, a prayer when I was enthusiastic and optimistic of the outcome of the Race for me. I prayed that God would move. I prayed that he would move through anyone and it wouldn’t matter who prayed the prayer or whose hands were used to work miracles as long as the prayers were being prayed and the miracles were happening. Now, I’m not the one praying. Now, I’m not the one whose hands are being used. And I thought that, if I reached this point, I would be okay with it and would give glory where it’s due for the things being done.
The truth is I’m not.
Oh, we are so good at hiding envy. I realize I’ve never put that word to it before and actually wanted to call it what it is. No one wants to admit to this monster because it hides behind every eye color there is. It is in all of us. We are all struggling to find and climb the ladder of significance and, in the end, it’s not even our significance that matters. We are not called to be significant. We are called to glorify and bow down at the throne of the one who is. I have to ask myself, “Are you prepared to come to terms with this?” And I have to prepare myself for my immediate answer to be, “No.”
It is not a natural human instinct to step aside and willingly, much less joyfully, let someone else be used or given power to wield. And, for that very reason, we are not asked to lean on human nature when it comes to this. We are asked to lean into the nature of the Holy Spirit, who is living in us. This, of course, is a choice. A decision to be made of our own free will. Can we be quietly obedient and confident in supporting those He is using? Can we confidently do nothing when all He asks of us is to be still? Of course not. But, with the Spirit in us and allowing His presence to fill us, the answer will become a hopeful and joyful—
“Yes, Lord.”
Thanks for reading.
Quick update:
We are currently on our way back to Ho Chi Minh to meet up with the rest of our squad and hop on a(nother) bus to Cambodia. My team made it to Da Nang (about halfway through our travels back to southern Vietnam) this morning at 3am. We will leave tomorrow at 11am on a 20-ish hour bus ride and should arrive between 9am and noon on Friday. Please keep us in your prayers as we get through the last of our travels in Vietnam. Love you all!
