as much as i learned over this past year that i work best in the mornings, late nights will forever be the zone that inspires the most creative flow in my brain. or it's the fact that i decided to listen to the new steffany gretzinger album ("the undoing") as i fell asleep. it's a brilliant sound - although it won't put you to sleep, by far. and that's okay. everything about this album makes me want to move into a lonely, back country cabin on a lake and write and play that old piano of mine and read the bible and get even more deep and write and write and write til my fingers all fall off.
i don't know when it hit me. a few years ago i was plagued by the challenge of whether or not i could survive in a room with only a piano, my bible, and Jesus. sometime in the past year i realized that i was living that challenge. although i haven't touched a piano since february, i spent more than enough time in a room by myself with just my bible and Jesus. i couldn't count the number of days and hours i was the only lonely student working in the classroom on the base in Montana. i also loved rising early and witnessing the sunrises on the base; being awake before the rest of the world was invigorating. it made me feel so alive. i relished those moments and breathed deep in the fact that i got to spend another full day studying the bible and growing closer to the ones i loved most dearly. they were truly the days. days of love, life, energy, passion, relationship, honesty, tears, desire. God permeated every inch of my life. scripture came alive in the beauty and simplicity of that place, and friends became the family i couldn't have ever even asked for - God knew my needs and filled them to overflowing. that's an attempt at conveying to you a taste of what SBS was like. a room. my bible. Jesus. i did it - and thrived.
and then i came home.
i almost feel a stab of pain when i write that. not that i want to, either. i'll be honest - i had feared coming back. things got so comfortable that i didn't want to leave the family, the environment, the love...i would experience random bursts of excitement while still in Montana about coming home when i would think of driving down familiar roads, seeing familiar faces, playing familiar games. i would absolutely soak in those moments, wrapping my hope of being home in them knowing that they would soon be real. i love it at home; really i do. for a long time i expected my heart to forever feel at home in this town, with these people, safely enclosed by the walls of this house.
but i got home and none of those anticipated feelings came. the first week was overwhelmed by pain; a dear friend and mentor, a woman who believed in me, hoped in me, and prayed for me went home to be with the Lord. I am sure her homecoming was sweet and joy filled; it's this side of heaven that will miss her. the same day another absolutely loving soul lost her husband to a sudden heart attack. these losses are not about me at all, and i do not suffer nearly as much as those most closely involved. amidst some other painful personal news i felt at such a loss for how i was supposed to support these friends, love them, share the hope i had so infused myself with over the past 9 months. it's like i was hit with the reality of the need for living out scripture within the first 36 hours of being home. my heart is still in pain of the depth of loss that not only these friends but this world suffers on a daily basis, and at how much of a loss i feel at knowing what to do about it.
i was watching the history channel the other night with my dad. there was a show on about some people hunting bears in alaska. during a commercial break there was a short ad for the channel where it's slogan was spoken, and it was something like "this is history now." in response i said to my dad, "really? this is history? is this what we're going to be remembering years and years from now as history? a bunch of people hunting for bears?" with so much else going on in the world right now that's worthy of being history we're allowing ourselves to tune out and be entertained by people hunting bears and bidding on old storage containers with hidden treasures and old bearded men finding gold nuggets in the yukon. are we really doing this? i know i'm totally guilty of zoning out and watching the Jays play and watching rerun after rerun of friends, so know i am not innocent and i am talking most to myself. my heart absolutely broke a little over a month ago when i heard the news of the brutality of what ISIS was doing. i wept. uncontrollably. i wept over the fact that there is so much pain in the world. i wept over the fact that i can't stop it in one defensive and smart action. i wept because i'd allowed myself live in the comfortability of being naive - something i'd spent the previous 5 years speaking passionately about. i wept because i live in freedom when other people are dying for their faith. i wept because i got to sleep in a comfortable bed where i could stretch out and cozy up into my blankets when there are people in the world who were running for the lives and sleeping in caves. i wept until i felt there were no tears left, all the time feeling at such a loss for how to respond.
the reality of scripture is something much more weighty than i realized while i studied it over 9 months. being faced with such pain daily forces you to consider how you're living out the truth of scripture that so desperately needs to leave those precious pages and fall to the earth through the actions of my hands. it's challenged me almost daily since being back [as it rightly should] about how i need to steward the knowledge i now possess. i gotta say, the family i made in SBS made it easy to love them; they were beyond fabulous, kind, caring, sweet, amazing people. each person i was privileged to have relationship with was deeply selfless and it only inspired me to inch my way closer to that place too. but in leaving that community i truly re-entered a world where safety isn't common, vulnerability is shunned, and naivety seems to be the norm. and in those first few weeks of being back i didn't turn to the security of the Word i'd come to so know and love for comfort. it was as if i saw the brokenness of the world and quickly implicitly decided Scripture held nothing against the selfish and enticingly evil rituals of this world. i was pushed to understand what it meant to actually live out what i'd learned - and not in the comfortability of a community that is inspiring me to do so.
i'll be honest: i'm still waiting to feel at home. i've gone through this summer searching for something. i don't even know what it is. i've wrestled with understanding how to combat the monotony and complacency that seems do dominate our culture. and as much as i'm still waiting and searching, i've concluded the simplest of simple things.
the reality of scripture means loving Jesus and loving others. straight up, i know. but really when it comes down to it, the best way for me to fight the evil in this world is to see the needs of those around me, and fulfill them as i can. the best thing for me to do is benefit others at my own expense, so the words of one very wise man would lead me to write down with conviction. countless times i've repeated this phrase to myself in those moments when i just didn't want to love.
the pain in this world is a reality, but the other reality is that Christ came once and for all and has already won. the reality of scripture dictates that this world isn't what it's about. we're sojourners on this earth, called to live and love. no matter where God's placed you - war torn Iraq, disease plagued West Africa, messy streets of Amsterdam, rural suburbs of Atlanta, sunny streets of Brisbane or a small town in Ontario - you're there for a reason. you're there- i'm here - because God has a plan for you there. you're not there by mistake. if He wanted you somewhere else - anywhere else - He would have put you there. it's that real, people. He would have put you there. But you're where you are. so don't beat yourself up over it. realize that if you're still searching for "that something bigger" it'll come. but in the meantime don't sit around - love the next person you see or pick up the phone and make a date of it. engage in that long conversation you "don't" have time for. buy that coffee with your extra $5. donate that money that missions team needs that you were just given or earned for your savings. ask someone out for breakfast. visit your grandparents. whatever it is, proclaim and act on the love that Christ has allowed you to understand and experience by the grace of his life.
let's together create a new reality that reflects scripture where we are.
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