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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

what just happened

I just finished watching the movie "The Tourist" and I couldn't help but think of what an odd parallel it is to my life at the moment. In the movie, Johnny Depp plays an Average Joe from Madison, Wisconsin, who finds himself in completely unexpected circumstances on a foreign continent. Sound familiar? That's basically been my life since May, minus the whole falling in love with Angelina Jolie part.

There are some days that I just sit and think, "What on earth am I doing here?" I'm just a kid from southeastern Wisconsin living in a community of random people from all over the world on the edge of the wild African bush and I'm trying to get work done in a foreign culture with far fewer resources than I'm accustomed to. I'm pretty sure that normal people don't willingly put themselves in situations like that and chose to stay for months on end.

On the other hand, there are days where I think that I have the best job in the world. I've been blessed with the opportunity to leave Wisconsin and travel the world. I live and work with fantastic people who love God and come from fascinating places and backgrounds. I get to live in an epic location with a backyard that most people back home would never even dream of seeing just once. I get to wrench on and drive all sorts of interesting vehicles and equipment that I otherwise would have never even touched. I get to build and fabricate stuff that immediately gets put into use in ministry right when I finish it. I get to experience and learn from a culture completely different from my own and develop life skills that I couldn't pick up any other way. I don't even have an idea of what "normal" looks like anymore.

God blesses those who love him so extravagantly that it's mind blowing. The choice to follow him wholeheartedly opens the door to abundant, adventurous, unexpected, satisfying life that is beyond anything we can think or imagine. No two lives are identical in the details of course, because we are all individually hand-crafted for a unique purpose by a loving maker who has his eye on each one of us just as if we were the only person on the planet. Every one of us has our own personality, calling, provision, and pathway given to us by a wise father and king who continues to pour out new blessing and revelation in ever-increasing quality and quantity as we walk hand in hand with him toward nothing other than himself.

Sometimes I don't have much fun in the things God brings me through. Sometimes it's really difficult, but I've noticed that he's always there through it all as well as waiting at the end. Sometimes I'm so excited with the way that he is working that I can't imagine how life could possibly get any better. But there's always something new, and it never fails to get better and better.