It’s a surprisingly cold morning in the mountains of *Baraduk, and the waterfall next to my hammock has stirred me awake with the same song it used to put me to sleep.
The frigid air must have crept into my sleeping bag sometime during the night because it’s already gone to work on this southern boy’s bare toes.
I sit up in my hammock to see that some of the other racers are awake and have spread out through the luscious green ravine we’ve been camping. It’s foggy, and the sun is far from clearing the hill and pouring into this place.
But the dim, cold morning paints our temporary home in the pale light of stillness.
It’s our third day in one of the most beautiful places I can imagine, and yet this morning I woke to a new beauty.
Be still and know that I am God.
Contrast leads me to think of *Lusarthna, a city that meant chaos for me. Monsoons erupt unexpectedly, whistling ATMs eat your debit card, and although English lends her alphabet to the road signs, the letters are arranged into words that mean nothing to me.
“That’s travel,” you’ll tell me.
But the day after we left, the road on which we spent most of our last day was attacked by gunmen and suicide bombers in an assault for which ISIS later claimed full responsibility.
That is a hurting city.
But this place is not Lusarthna.
This place is peace.
In a few hours, we’ll load into vans, and our teams will be sent to different parts of the region. Some will return to Lusarthna. My team will wake up at 4:00am to pray alongside the mosque next door.
But while they blast prayers over an outdoor PA system, simply to fulfill a pillar of faith, we’ll be praying to a God who hears us.
In the breathtaking stillness of morning, we’ll be praying to a King who calls us sons and daughters.
*Names of people and places have been changed in order to protect the privacy and security of those serving the Lord in our current location.
