Pastor Gift started our week with an interesting statement to our team. He felt like our theme for our time in Nsoco needed to be “No Excuses.” He went through the parable of the wedding banquet and all of the excuses people had to not attend. One of the statements he said has been tying up some loose ends in my brain. “There is no excuse to not touch a life today.” In the bible and in Christian culture I have heard about “the one.” It’s one of those phrases I thought I understood… just like so many other things in the bible. In a nutshell it God going after “the one” refers to God’s love for the individual. He cares about each one of us so deeply. But, I’m in a phase of life where I am beginning to understand that the more I learn the less I know…. about pretty much everything. This is a topic that God keeps putting in my path in a variety of ways. Here are a few of them: *In Who I am in Christ by Neil T Anderson he shares this poem: I saw no likeness to Him in you today and since I shall not pass your way again it matters not that yesterday His light shown in you or that tomorrow you may want to make amends I passed your way today. There is no excuse not to touch a life today. It matters what I do and how I act towards everyone I meet. It’s not about feeling like being a Christian… or feeling like being loving… it’s about living like Christ.* *Being a roaming short term missionary this year… there are so many times that we meet someone who has met a previous world race team, or knows a missionary, or wants to tell us all about the pastor who told them about Jesus. It happens all the time… walking by a fruit stand in Mozambique we met some young men who knew English remarkably well. When Danny asked where they learned English they replied “Our friend, Ryan Stewart taught us… do you know him?” Well, Ryan is a world race alumni who helped set up ministry in Vilanculos when his team was there… many months ago. Just last week this happened… Jackie and I were talking to one of our favorite Grandmas, Elizabeth. She’s funny because she knows a little bit of English…but will talk at us 95% of the time in Siswati. This was one of those times. We were pretending to understand when all of a sudden she made a motion at her face and the word “Casey” comes through clear as a bell… Jackie and I exchanged a curious look wondering if she could possibly be referring to the famous beard of Casey Barefield. Then she switched to English and asked for our addresses to write us a letter. When she pulled out her address book, our suspicions were confirmed when we glanced at her list and saw that the two name before us were Sarah Dager and Lauren Morris. There is no excuse to not touch a life today. In our culture of instant results, stories like these are hard to grasp. We want people to “get it.” We get frustrated by time constraints thinking “if only I had longer in each country to build relationships.” In God’s counter-culture we may never see the harvest but we can confidently know that we are planting and watering seeds with our lives every day.* *”Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search until she finds it?” Luke 15:8 There is no excuse not to touch a life. If this is how God feels about every “coin,” what’s my excuse to not join in hunt? How can I walk by lost coins every day and not help God polish them up with a smile, a helping hand, and the truth about the Almighty One who has been searching for them their whole life?”* *I just finished an amazing book called Under The Overpass by Mike Yankoski. Mike decided to become homeless for 5 months to see what it was like and to put his faith into action. This book is amazing… you should read it. From one city he shares a story about his friend and him playing worship music late one night in the courtyard they were sleeping in. The next day a woman they were acquainted with came up to them and thanked them for her lullaby. She normally has nightmares but the past night she fell right asleep and had none. She requested another song session that night. Mike then goes on to share this: “I wondered that night if God hadn’t brought us across the continent just to sing Pamela to sleep on His behalf. The apostle Paul said in Ephesians that God works that way- that we’ve been created to keep certain appoinmetments for Him, to complete certain excuses.”* There is no excuse not to touch a life today. I am learning to not only believe, but to know that God will send us around the world, or to the coffee shop around the corner for one person. He cares that much. * There is no excuse not to touch a life today.
