Yesterday I had a vision, or an epiphany, or maybe I was just thinking to myself. Regardless, sitting here in front of my computer, staring at my desktop background I had a little conversation. With myself or God I don't know. But it was an important conversation.
See, this is the image I was looking at. I know, I know. It would change anybody's life, but just bear with me. :) I was looking at that clump of farms, just right and down from center, and there was the question, "Could you live on that farm forever, having no more impact in the world than the people around you?" It is a question I struggle with a lot, and usually labor for hours before coming to an answer. But yesterday I found a "yes" off my lips before my mind had completely finished processing the question. Just as quickly came the next question, "Why not here?" I knew the question was referring to California, or the States, or at least wherever it is I feel tied to. And that question had not immediate answer. No, it is a question I am still thinking on.
In one of my summer classes, we were discussing careers and reasons why some people become "great" while others don't accomplish much. There was an anecdote of one of the professor's friends who claimed he'd made a great composer, "if only." My prof asked the class, "What excuses are you making to cover up becoming great? When you say you are stuck, that is giving up; when you say you are stopped, that gives reason to fight."
I think my desktop had the same questions for me. What excuses am I using?
"Oh, I can't really become too involved in ministry because I'm in America for a short while."
"Well, if I were in a different country I'd care about this a lot more."
My list goes on as well. And on, and on...
Don't get me wrong, I don't feel at all like God is calling me to serve in the States, He's just calling me to grow up a little bit. If I don't act they way I ought here, what says I am going to act the way I ought there? If my focus is blurry here, what about there will make it clear?
Of course there are some very obvious answers to those questions, but the answer I am meant to understand is deeper than that. Its a call to step beyond the excuses of the obvious answers into a deeper place in my soul to understand who I am. To understand why I am called overseas beyond the obvious answer, "Because I fit in there." To realize a deeper yearning in my heart, a fire lit by God's Spirit. If these deeper questions are answered, it will indeed be revealed how much of an excuse the "obvious" answers are.
And I don't like excuses.
So I find myself asking over and over, "Why not here?"
And it does indeed give reason to fight. If it is something I claim to value ideally, why doesn't the wake of my life relate such a story as I barge through this America? The story my past tells is not the story I want my future to tell, and that is why I ask myself these questions. I want to know why my past hasn't lined up with my future, and I want to know what I need to change and how so that they will.
End of story. (today, at least...)
