Hello everyone,
I now find myself in Terminal 4 of London Heathrow airport, where I have resided today. With a scheduled twelve-hour layover, I've had a great opportunity to get some reading and emailing done, including writing and sending this message. I'm almost to South Africa, and very excited about hitting the ground there.
Such a twelve-hour period has certainly been rare in my past few months. Usually, even after graduating, my time can sometimes appear to be filled with a clutter of activities. Jesus was speaking about money when he told us that "No servant can serve two masters," but I've found in those words a lesson that includes a warning about becoming a slave to the pursuit of wealth, but goes a good deal farther. These words point to the continuous danger of neglecting our duty of singular dedication to God. (as an aside, for Jesus word's to make sense, one must first realize that one always serves some master) Many masters in this world demand our dedication, and even those unambiguously good creations of God, human friendship, for example, can descend under the weight of sin to becoming masters to us, usurping the place of God. Sometimes, the desire to fill my time with many activities can become a cruel master to me. Though these activities are generally great things like hanging out with friends, this problem can still happen.
My flight schedule has been all over the place, from delaying it for an illness, to having the illness treated and going on the original schedule, to having that flight canceled and being rebooked to Thursday, to then finding a Monday departure that has in fact brought me to Heathrow today. During the times when I thought I had gained a few extra days back at home, I was thinking about what to do. "Wow, I won't be rushed to send out a first prayer email... I'll sit back and get some reading done... I can pray more deeply in preparation for my travels." And then, when the flight got pushed earlier again, it seemed that I was back to the normal, faster pace. When this first happened was when I saw this cruel master a bit more clearly, and wrote about it in our blog. And since then, I have come to hope for God to be more fully my one master during this time in South Africa.
And so I am ready - because I trust that God will make me ready - to step into what I have described to some, lately, as a bit of a void. I don't know what things will look like, except that some things aren't like here, and I don't know what precisely I will be doing day to day. But I trust that it is worthy. I recognize the need for God to grow me in his ways, and am blessed to have this time to directly serve the one master. I hope to gain eyes to see in South Africa the ways that God has blessed me in the past few weeks and in my time in South Africa, and to carry these things into the future.
That's a lot of stuff about me, but I ask God's blessing upon the two halves of my journey: me, and the world as I encounter it in South Africa. But now, one half of this is a void to me. I look forward to describing it to you! Because the Kingdom of God emerges out of the encounter between the gospel and the world.
Here's a quick list of stuff that you can pray if you wish, in light of all this:
- For full health in Africa;
- For the blessings in experiences of yet unknown culture to overcome the challenges in these experiences;
- For my heart to serve God and His Kingdom during this time;
- And for the Kingdom to remain within me after I return.
For the Kingdom,
Carl
No comments:
Post a Comment