The way I make decisions in life is by weighing them out over time. I shift my mindset and imagination into the new area and begin to adjust my actions towards that decision. If I find myself still walking in that mindset after a few days, I go for it. I can say with quite a bit of certainty, this is where I find myself heading - going back to Guatemala, to Fundaninos to serve the kids down there.
Why? I want to disciple the kids. I want to play a father role in their life. I want to be available to them and show them how to live, in pain and joy. I love to teach both English and Jesus. I love to play and explore. I love to hear children's thoughts. I love to lead through the Word and figure out what it means as we try to live it out. I want to dream with the kids and help them accomplish their dreams. I want to be a safe place for them to try out the commands of God and celebrate with them as the walk in holiness and show them mercy as they fail.
The Lord always talks about how He is the father to the fatherless. I can never fulfill that role as He desires it be filled, but as a single guy at 25, done with my degree, and with a desire to love on kids, and the opportunity to do so, I can make myself available to be the hands and feet of a father (The Father if he would so desire).
The Lord says that pure and undefiled religion is to visit the orphan and widow in distress and to be unstained by the world. I see this is the Lord's heart. Maybe the Lord will call me to the States at some point to love on our own orphans, but as it were, I have already loved these kids and they have loved and trusted me. I have a mission field readily accessible to me in these children of Guatemala. My eyes of compassion is already on them.
So I have sent the letter to the missions pastor of our campus asking that we might begin this discussion on what it might look like to go to Guatemala, sent out by the Village, for midterm-long term. I do see myself as doing this long term, we'll see. Fund raising scares me a lot. Asking for money is no fun to me. But maybe it's because I don't yet fully believe in the mission. Even now, as I begin to believe in it's worth-whileness, I find more ease in asking.
So the word is patience. That is the card I play tonight. Do not disengage where you are at. Force nothing in to the now. James talks about making plans.
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
So I will wait.
May I be patient. May I love people now. May I not give in the pride I have harbored so close to my chest with pity parties, bitterness, anger, and entitlement. May I not fear the Word of God but love it and be willing to be re-formed by it.
Patience.
Trust.
For the Record: "Ya crece la flor."
