Anything could happen right now. Occurrences happen all the time when we do not expect them. I was not expecting a local street dog to come into our class at school the other day, pee on the wall then walk out, but it happened. The next day Sarah decided to make sure her shoes were not within street-dog-peeing-distance before we walked into school. This is a small example, but on a bigger scale unthought of occurrences change life situations. Simple mindless decisions at times cause unexpected results.
Things change. John says, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) Those who follow Jesus will feel like they are following the wind. There is no controlling God. He really does just do whatever He pleases.
As Sarah and I have finally gotten to Cambodia, we are feeling settled. Things have slowly begun to pick up. We haven’t committed to too much because as time progresses, we know more and more harvest (or sowing) will come before us. We are pacing ourselves, because two years can be a long time. At first, when we applied (2.5 years ago) to go to Cambodia through Adventures in Missions, we committed to two years. We have kept that number in our head. In some ways though, two years seems so short! In other ways it seems long! And when work like ours is so relational, it’s hard to think about leaving, and it’s hard to think about staying. The temptation is to protect our hearts–only give ourselves to what we think is worth it, and won’t hurt us too much.
Anything could happen. For all we know we could be back in America next week. Or a month from now, we could be in another country, or we could be here for two years like we have originally thought. God is like the wind. We don’t know what’s before us.
In the midst of God blowing like the wind, and in the midst of the calm (just as we have settled right now), God is asking to us give everything. Be faithful as though tomorrow is our last day. Sacrifice everything for the purposes of God. Open our hearts as though our neighbors will always be our neighbors. He is pressing us to live as though we are here forever.
I don’t know what our future looks like here as much as we did when we lived back in America. God orders our steps. As we are here, our hearts are all in because thats what He wants, and God is worth it.
