Africa/Wherever You Are

Mission week at harding really got me excited for the possibility of going overseas. My mind would wander to an organic trip to Africa, one where everyday I am immersed by a culture and the work of being Christ’s servant. I feel like I could really thrive in this kind of environment. It only takes me a like a week to get used to a setting. For example college during the first week was pretty overwhelming but by the next week I had my schedule down.

But these kind of trips cost big money, money that I earn by working like twelve hours a week at minimum wage (I am not complaining about my job, I actually love it). It would take complete commitment and everywhere I turn in this college life there is more commitment: it is starting to add up. Classes, work, social clubs, friends and serving around Searcy. I don’t think I could just drop everything at this point in my life and go.

Unfortunately this isn’t how my mind operates. I want to escape. I find myself driving out to Riverside Park alone just to run and climb like a child. Responsibilities start to drive me crazy to where I feel like I will explode soon if I don’t get out. What am I running from? I am running from my rationalization. I tell myself that my problems will just suddenly disappear if I could just reach this part of life, the servant lifestyle. I say the world will just make sense when all my energy is directing toward missions.

I think I am just wanting to see God in His rawest form. Danger.

I poured all of this out to a good friend the other day and he helped me realize where I was at in my life. He thought maybe I was forgetting how much of a journey service happens to be. It is not a destination. It is more than medical missions in Africa. It is saying hello, how are you? to the postal man and really wanted to share with him. Discovering that God is inside all of us and helping everyone see the true reality.

What does all of this require? Patience.

God gave me the resources to learn at an amazing Christian university. I have been richly blessed yet, I want get out. The crazy thing is all the people in the places I want to escape to would give everything to come to America to get an education. It is selfish of me, really. Inside I am taking everything for granted. I still slack off in my studies because I want to just have fun; how can I act like this and still think I would thrive in Africa? I have been just bashing myself for being blessed and having money in my pockets. God gave me these materials for a reason. It is time that I start focusing my energy toward the journey and not the next point in my life.

I am going to pray for understanding and clarity of mind. I want to use every part of my education to better the world for Christ’s sake. My actions in school should reflect a servant’s heart. And not for me because this whole Christian thing, it is a spirit of community. None of this personal relationship stuff. I am losing myself in Jesus, who is reflected in the souls surrounding me.

Paul’s words to Timothy: Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.

A Natural God

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul, proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-top hill, a humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their nature land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To Be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

--A passage I really enjoyed from Alexander Pope's An Essay of Man