“And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.””
Matthew 8:19-20 ESV
Here on the Race, you learn a lot. Sometimes, you just have so many thoughts that you need to write them down. As I showed today, this scripture, quoted above, came to my mind. And so I thought and thought of what that has looked like on my race so far.
I’ve written on my blog before about the cost of discipleship, but I would like to expand on this one idea through experiences I have had.
It all started on day #1. I believe it was January 14th. It was the day we were to leave the beautiful USA. We go to the ATL international airport and hop on a plane, which is headed to Turkey for a good ole fashioned layover. We arrived pretty late in the afternoon. I think we saw the sun setting as we arrived and we had to wait 10 hours until we left for the last leg of our flight. (This was the airport that had a shooting not too long ago.) The squad proceeded to find a vacant and large area under an escalator which led from the food court upstairs to the restroom and VIP lounge downstairs. We were downstairs, but by no means were we in the lounge. We learned quickly that any place will be our bed and that any floor could be our home. Within 24 hours of leaving our comfortable home we knew that this year would be different.
As for me, I didn’t experience the bush of Africa while spending three months in that continent, but many teams with us definitely did. They would sleep on their sleeping pads in their tents in the open air. Some were unlucky and had holes in their sleeping pads and basically slept on the ground. Although, they were guarded from things that crawl while being in their tents(except for the mosquitoes and the occasional spider.) During the day they, they weren’t necessarily safe from the crawling things anymore. I had a few friends get chased by Camel Spiders. That aside, this is just one way in which we learned a little bit about that scripture which Jesus basically tells a man who wants to follow Him, you may have nowhere to sleep. You may be homeless. Jesus doesn’t tell the man he can’t follow him, but tells him it won’t be easy and it will cost him.
Next, sometimes you may not know where you will lay your head at night. For example, in Myanmar a few of our teams travelled together. We took a bus in the afternoon and reached our destination at about 2 or 3 in the morning. By destination I mean a bus stop. This bus stop wasn’t very big and we couldn’t get in touch with our host all day. And so, we had only one option, we were going to call a few benches and the cold hard ground our beds. We were supposed to have beds that night, but it just didn’t work out. Here were maybe 20 or 21 mostly white Americans sleeping on the ground in Myanmar, just because we were falling what the Lord had called us to. We had, in that moment, got another glimpse into what it means to not have a place to rest your head. We experienced what it means and what it costs to follow our God.
Another part of the race that makes us long for a home comes from this: We never stay in a place for longer than a month. For some, it may seem like it’s nice to move from country to country every month, but I will let you in on something. When you stay in a place for a month, you build relationships with people, like your host, little kids or others that you are ministering to. You get close to them and you grow to love them. Then come a couple of weeks and they are ripped from your hands and you from theirs. I still remember my month 1 in Mozambique. We were the last team to leave our host, because every team came to our host so that we can travel together. We were all in a few different buses and I remember looking out of the windows and saying goodbye so many times In Portuguese to the little guys that we were ministering to. I loved those boys and it hurt to say goodbye. That was month one and, so far, every month is the same. You grow in these relationships and it, always, is not fun to say goodbye. Even some of the months that may have been harder, it wasn’t fun saying goodbye. We had to keep saying goodbye, because for these 11 months you are not home. I feel that as I go “home” after month 11 it will seem not so much like home just as much as these other places.
This leads me to my final point. You may get homesick on the race. You want to see your friends or family or your comfy bed, but what is home? We have this longing to call a place home, but really, what is that? This longing and desire for a home is much more than what you think about. You immediately think home is a place many thousands of miles away, but your home is much more than that. Home, simply, is in heaven with our Father. Of course we have a longing to be home, because forever we will long to be with our Lord and that won’t come until we pass away or Kingdom comes. This longing we have is a healthy thing, we just can’t let it hinder us. It should, if anything, encourage us. We know that eventually we WILL be home. We will fight the good fight, finish the race and keep the faith. We are supposed to run with perseverance, not with fear. Jesus calls the scribe in these verses to live life for Him even if it is uncomfortable, even if it’s dangerous, because our home is not of this earth, but of heaven.
These are just a few examples of the cost of discipleship and the cost of what it means to follow Christ. Sometimes, you have no place to rest and you have no place to call your own, but we have Christ. He is our home and He satisfies us. Right now, going “home” is less than 3 months away and it is a little frightening to think about. These past 8 months I have learned a lot and I just don’t know what to do with all that I have been learning. In many different ways my life is changing because of the cost of following Jesus. I really get to see what it means to follow Him. It is beautiful, but remember, it won’t be easy. As Jesus has said,” foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to rest His head.” Don’t be surprised if you find yourself in a similar position.
Expect to see more blogs soon!
Soli Dei Gloria
