A Better World

    Have you ever been so focused on your own struggles that you feel like you’re drowning in them? Like you couldn’t possibly handle one more stressor or circumstance or conversation without needing to run? And when you stop to face them, they only seem to look bigger than before? 


I have. On multiple occasions, throughout the years. But you know what? 


    God always turns me around. When the pile of emotions and waterfall of thoughts I feel buried under threaten to steal my focus and joy, he reins me in. And it seems that he does it different every time. 


    This time, it was Afghanistan. It was the reality that people are in very present danger, laying their lives on the line. Clinging to airplanes flying to the States for freedom from a group of people whose only goal is to steal, kill, and destroy only to drop to their deaths. The understanding, the knowledge, and the ultimate acceptance that I could experience that terror one day. And I probably will. 


    And just like that, I’m one of them. A believer who is willing to praise him if it means my physical death. A believer who would gladly leave it all behind if it meant God’s name was glorified and I got to meet him sooner. A believer who looks in the face of the adversary and declares the power of my Savior. But can I tell you a secret I’ve been keeping?


    I don’t feel like one of those believers. My first response is usually one that sets my heart racing and leaves me quaking in my boots. A response immediately followed by guilt and more fear because my initial response wasn’t one of bravery and trust and hope and faith in my Father. A response that makes me feel a lot like Peter, and just like him, the end result of that reaction is tears. Tears that build up so much that I can’t release them or produce them sometimes.


Matthew 26:74-75                                                                                                                                 "Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly."


    So here I am. Far displaced from the anxiety that has been picking at me the past week. My mind so far away from my day job, the everyday tasks that need to get done, and all the dreams I’ve been curating since I was 12. How can all of these things, feelings, thoughts, events, exist in the same world? How can they be placed on the same timeline? I don’t know how to take glory and joy in all these little accomplishments when people are fighting for their faith and risking their lives. 


    Every little thing that we enjoy as leisure is a luxury, and I cannot bring myself to enjoy them when there are Christians throwing them away for the opportunity to freely live out their faith. Seeing it all makes me extremely grateful. Grateful and thankful and so so awed at His provisions in my life, that I’m at a loss as how to go back to living every day as of I had the rest of my life ahead of me. How to soak in so many blessings knowing there are others who never had the chance. 


    I just hope and pray that when we are all faced with the option to run or remain planted, we choose the latter. Because Jesus is in the waiting, and we are already dead to this world and it’s pleasures. May God grant us all the peace and zeal to praise him in the persecution, knowing that our cup is overflowing with rich blessings this world cannot provide. And the only way to see a better world is to join Him in the new one, when He calls us home.


Colossians 2:6-7

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving."


All my love and prayers,

JesusFreak


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