The silence over the past two weeks has been a time of seeking my Father’s heart. I came back numb. No pain. When I fell and broke my arm a few years ago, I felt nothing. Even though there was deep brokenness in my body, I was somehow protected from feeling it. It was only in the months to follow I experienced the pain, the healing and the realization that the brokenness was at many levels. I realize now, God did break me in many ways on this venture, the levels and depth to which I know will unravel as the Lord allows, but I am just now beginning to feel the pain of that brokenness. Father, keep breaking my heart for the things that break yours.
I want to assure you, I had an unbelievable trip. The people God brought to my life have been a deep source of renewed passion, vision and encouragement. BUT, the difficulty I have had is in reconciling the two worlds I lived in within two weeks time. It IS truly a different world in Africa. One that is deep in my heart. A world that is so raw in its beauty. This world holds people with a resiliency of spirit and a faith of total dependence on God that is inspiring to me. At the same moment, the injustices–the poverty, the orphans, the lack of resources causes me to ask why the gap is so wide…between our two worlds. I came back more convinced of our responsibility as the body of Christ. I believe God HAS provided for enough for all His people. I believe God needs MORE from those of us that He has entrusted with so much. I KNOW He needs more workers.
So, again, God in His merciful and gentle way spoke to me–reminding me that HE loves all He has made. That HE is sovereign. That HE is their Defender, their HOPE, their Father, and their LIFE. I can trust Him with that. And I can offer MY LIFE as an offering for Him–for His use–to LOVE HIM and love His people. In my 10 days, I could not end the poverty in Ethiopia. I couldn’t even give one orphan a mommy. I could not make too much of a difference, really. BUT, I have sought the Lord’s heart, I know more deeply how to see HIM in the poor, the orphaned, the hungry. I came away with deeper conviction and confirmation of how God has called our family–how HE is really pursuing us–how HE is drawing us closer to His heart. It is not an easy, feel-good path. It is a path of laying down a lot of the way we live–many things we enjoy in this world, but it is a path of love and of serving…a path my Savior walked. I believe it is the path of Abundant Life.
It is not my place to reconcile the two worlds, but it is my place to see how Jesus bridges every gap, how HE reconciled the WORLD to Himself in love, and how HE has called my family to serve Him in this ‘other world’.
“God reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
WE are therefore Christ’s AMBASSADORS, as though God were making his appeal through us.
We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be RECONCILED to God.
God made HIM (Jesus) who had NO SIN to BE SIN FOR US, so that IN HIM we might become the Righteousness of God.”
2 Cor. 5:18-21
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