(Originally written on November 1, 2015)
Today is the two month marker. In approximately 63 days I will be boarding a plane for the Spanish Institute in Costa Rica. Is this for real??
Today was also the 1 year marker from the time I had moved in with a roommate into our three bedroom apartment. With my lease being up, it was time for me to move somewhere else for the short remainder of my time here in America. God has provided a sweet place with my cousin, his wife, and their three little boys. I was greeted with hugs and kisses and much excitement on my very first night here. There were even offers to help me unpack my suitcase with eager two-year old fingers tugging at the zippers. Life here will never be dull - that's for sure! I'm looking forward to the time God has given me with this family. I have no words to describe to you the crazy conglomeration of feelings that are encapsulated in my mind and heart. The shorter my time here becomes, the more bittersweet everything seems. What a crazy tug-of-war inside of me as I cannot contain the excitement about what lies ahead, yet still have pangs in my heart that bring tears to my eyes when I realize what I must leave behind. I wonder if the disciples ever longed for their families or missed home. Those men were sold out to the Gospel - following the Messiah...but I wonder...when the crowds withdrew and the Master went to pray and the other men were sleeping, if there wasn't a tear that escaped a man's eye because his heart missed his family and all that was familiar. But there was just something about that man, Jesus, that kept them going on this peculiar journey - even though it called them to give up everything comfortable and familiar and follow his footsteps in a path in which they didn't know where they would lay their heads or find their next meal.
There is something about this man, Jesus, that causes me to step in the way that He has laid before me. No matter where that path leads. No matter what must be left behind. On Wednesday nights at our church, we have our kids and youth gatherings. In recent weeks we have talked about Abram. (His story begins in Genesis 12) There was SO MUCH that resonated with me because of the journey I'm on, in my own life with God. I want to share one of those things here in this post. "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I will show you...So Abram went as the Lord had told him...From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent...And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord." (Gen. 12:1; 12:4; 12:8)
God said go. Abram went. He pitched his tent, built an altar, and worshiped God. That's good enough the first time you read it...but if you read through the story of Abram in the Bible, you see the same pattern over and over again. God spoke. Abram obeyed. He pitched his tent, and worshiped God.
God has been teaching me how to do these things for about a year and a half now and I'm just seeing it. I rented space from some friends for six months when I moved out of my parents house. "And she pitched her tent..." I lived in my apartment for a year. "And she pitched her tent..." I will be living here with my cousin's family for two months and then in Costa Rica with a host family for six months. "And she pitched her tent and worshiped the Lord."
With each move, I've let go of some of my belongings. That will continue to be so. I'm learning that things are temporal - and nothing I have is really mine, anyway. It could all be here today and gone tomorrow. He is teaching me to "be content with such things as I have." (Phil. 4:11)
With each new place and each person I've lived with over the last year and a half, I have learned much about myself and about relating to others and I have been continually changed as God is preparing me for specific things that lie ahead.
So. Wherever the next steps take me, I long to be just like Abram.
God said go. Megan went. She pitched her tent, built an altar, and worshipped God.Let it be so.
