from journal 4/20/2011 a few weeks at the new house.
Every day I feel it. The tension of the temporary. Being here only for a mist and making our lives count. There’s no one that’s immune, no one that doesn’t want their life to have meaning. We long for the beautiful, but settle for the false representations our culture presents us, only leaving us longing…
This morning alone, I drive past some run down townhomes near my home, and see many people waiting for the bus. I see a quietness, stillness as most of them wait alone, not speaking and then I notice the property sign, “Hope” Properties. Every day I try to catch someone’s eye and smile, and wonder when I’ll just walk over and meet them. I continue driving toward my home and see a fence falling apart, and notice the truck across the street is full of wood meant for the house with a perfectly intact fence already. I watch a documentary trailer on Brazil that deeply moves me. I close my eyes and want to be there in the village, among the people, surrounded by trash, being light to disheartened, broken people, and making their world better… As I close the screen, I’m greeted with the iTunes latest unsettling ad for a popular musician and CD cover. I’m struck by the contrast of my worlds today. The sadness of people in need in a world that offers much. Plenty and not enough. The magnitude of the beauty of our human spirit met with spiritual atrophy. I sit in my pretty home with my pretty things every day and feel this conflict. This tension. Knowing I’m not here for myself, I’m not here to enjoy my comfortable, pretty life. I’m here to commune with the One that created me, and care for His people to turn them to Him. It’s that simple. And every turn of my head brings images of a culture I can’t understand and one I pray my kids won’t either. I desire deeply for them to experience this tension and never accept this world’s offerings. Every good and perfect gift is from above. God, stir in our hearts here, to bring beauty and be light.
I read a blog by Ann Voscamp yesterday that again, as she often does, convicts me and encourages me. She talks about the longing of her child to die. Not a physical death, but a death to the flesh, or the life we once desired before we knew Jesus. To truly live a “for I no longer live, but Christ that lives in me” kind of life. A complete surrender to the things this life offers and a grasp of what we can’t see, but know to be real. Her daughter says as her mother is trying to leave the room at night, the night before her baptism, “Mom, pray, I really want to. Pray.” And her mother agrees. Her mother prays her daughter is ready to die, to really lay down her own ambitions and versions of happiness in exchange for a Holy passion full of enough love and beauty to fill 100 lifetimes… The world won’t recognize it, but it will be there in our hearts, and the deepest longings and joy within us can’t be taken.
As I work to settle in a new home with many things to do, I find the talk of where to hang this and which rug to put where truly wears on me, as the price of any of these items could feed families around the world and likely down the street. As I sit here typing this right now, children are laying in villages around the world with stomach aches from hunger and disease and I wonder if they are certain we must not know what’s happening there. What do I say to God one day as I stand before him? I cared a lot? I shed a lot of tears over the thousands that died each day? I’m sorry I didn’t do more. I ‘m sorry I didn’t give more. I’m sorry I tithed what you asked and kept the rest for myself, when the rest was more than I needed…
God, please, I ask for courage, strength and for your timing, but I ask for clarity and I commit to go wherever you send us. I commit my family to your service. You can have all of us. Please use us to bring your light to the hearts here and wherever you take us. Make my hearts desire to die empty and not filled up. Teach us how to pour out our lives for others. I pray for your blessings of your understanding and wisdom today. Thank you for your Spirit’s nudge to see so much right around me. Help me see your Kingdom work everywhere today and bring others closer to you. Thank you for bringing us here, for opening our eyes, waking us up.. The greatest gift of any lifetime is to be awakened by You. You are so much more than enough.