Well, we are just finishing up the last bits of our outreach and I'm totally ready to come back home in 3 weeks!
I'm still seeking God about what comes next... however, I know its not going to be sitting around vegetating in the box of an average american life anymore. Being out here, and moving in passion to what God has called me to, and being his tool wherever he might lead me... That brings far more joy and peace to my soul than any comfortable life could. (and yet the funny thing is, comfort doesn't mean happiness... all I've ever found was an unsettling feeling in my soul like there is more to life, like everything is a pointless waste of time). To me the most important thing in life is God, and being with the people I love. Everything else in this world is vain and pointless... because like the rest of this world and this life, it will all fade away. And it will go by as fast as a breath. Man's first breath enters his lungs at birth, and he exhales his last breath when he dies. The old man lies on his death bead, and as breathes his last, I imagine he realizes that's just what it was, a breath in and a breath out. The rest in between was just a blur...
It's quite like a hamster maze that goes in circles, and no matter how hard the hamster tries, it will never find the end because there isn't one. And the sad thing is, the hamster doesn't realize his own situation, or the fact that it is living in a made up world of plastic and walls that spans about 24" by 24". The only way that hamster is going to find out its predicament is if a hand reaches in and pulls it out so that it can see the world around it. Then what if that giant hand sets the hamster down outside of its cage and gives it a chance to choose for itself? And if that the hamster sees and feels the real world around it, will it choose the only thing its ever known up until this point? Plastic and walls? Or, will it take the other option now set before it? A world of reality, yet uncertainty... the only thing familiar now being the giant hand? Then what if that giant hand gives the hamster a third option? Instead of venturing into the unknown world alone... what if the hand offers to carry the hamster and guide it as it steps into a realm it never knew could exist?
I felt like an old man. I felt like 'butter spread over too much bread'. I saw the world for what it really was, and couldn't settle for plastic anymore. Its like when you really love junk food as a child and then your mum tells you white bread is really no better for you than cardboard, and that margarine is one molecule away from plastic. Somehow it doesn't taste quite as good anymore. Suddenly the french fries at McDonald's start to taste a little like Windex.
In the same way, the world that once filled my mind with wonder as a child became very dull and dark, and all the work I did wasted my life away with each passing day. The adventurous young man I once was was gone. The same guy who walked by the shady alley ways hoping for some hooligan to pop out and try to jump him, became the guy who now only wanted to enjoy the clouds as they passed by, and listen to the trees filled with sounds of melodious birds in the morning. Instead of drawing sketches of heroic bloody battles in the medieval times, I was now craving to draw daisies and dandelions. I finally began to hate this life so much that the only thing I wanted anymore was heaven, and perhaps to spend time with my loved ones while i'm still here on earth. I didn't belong to any work environment at all, nothing could satisfy my true purpose anymore... I was ruined for this world. No more 24" plastic boxes filled with endless mazes.
So the hamster jumped into that rather large appendage of a hand, and found itself quite refreshed with the idea that it wasn't surrounded by plastic anymore.
That young man who felt like 'butter spread over too much bread' no longer felt like an old man. His soul was satisfied with true peace and happiness, and he found himself to be adventuring in a way he never imagined he would.
And so now, as the unsightly sight of plastic approaches once again like an island in the distant fog, I dread it as much as I dread the idea of chewing on a box of crayons.
