Let’s sit down for a cup of coffee. Or tea, or hot chocolate, whatever you like. Wrap your fingers around your mug, soaking in the warmth of your preferred comfort beverage, a sharp but pleasant contrast to the chilly weather outside. Lean back in your big, cushioned chair, inhaling the candle scent of… what’s your favorite? Vanilla? Cinnamon? Fresh linen? Let it stimulate your senses, conjuring up thoughts and dreams you may have set aside long ago for more practical things.
Because, for now, I want to talk about things that aren’t so practical.
What is your calling?
Has anyone ever asked you before?
What’s the thing that sets you on fire? That niggling thought of what could be, the issue that keeps you up at night? What has God awakened in your soul?
Maybe it’s kids living on the streets of a land oceans away. Abandoned, helpless, hungry, your arms long to hold them and your heart longs to love them, breathing affirmation and the reality of something better to come. Maybe it’s the professional women who wander through life in a haze, wondering if there is any meaning to the day in and day out, keeping of books, laundering of clothes, scheduling of appointments, handling of budgets, securing of relationships – but ever alone. Maybe it’s writing music or researching the cure for breast cancer or saving the killer whales at Sea World.
Sit on it for a minute. Allow it to stir you. Reflect on how it began, where the journey has taken you.
I have made it my ambition to go where Christ has not been named.
It all started at Camp. The experiencing life beyond the Bible Belt, the coming into contact with kids who didn’t grow up singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children” or having parents who kissed them goodnight. The realizing… Oh, I have the Message that matters. And the ability to tell them about it.
So I did.
And God woke me up to a passion I didn’t know I had.
This started me down the uncomfortable and dangerous path that is… Well, I have seen. And now I am responsible.
I volunteered in youth groups. I got back to the very basics with my small group of high school girls: Why did Jesus have to die for us to be saved? What does being “saved” even mean?
I loved teaching, I really did. But my heart wandered elsewhere, to the places where the name of Jesus had scarcely been uttered. Countries far, far away.
I spent eleven nomadic months in these places, growing into a state of dependence, a realization that I could never change the world on my own. I saw the hunger – physical, spiritual, emotional. And I was never the same. Trusting the Lord to be my strength and my guide, that was the key.
Having dabbled in enough wanderlust to satiate me for awhile, I asked God to open up a door for something less short-term. And he did.
Imagine.
Imagine growing up in a place where the name of Jesus had never been spoken or heard. Where your parents encouraged you to dedicate your worship to various gods of gold or stone. Where your sole ambition, besides maintaining your existence, is to gain perfect peace, nirvana, through giving to temples, feeding monks, and praising lifeless idols. A place where the produce of the soil is low, but the number of people who believe the Truth is vastly lower.
This is the province of Isan in the country of Thailand.
Pretty cool, right?
I’ll leave it at that for now, but I’m excited to tell you more… soon.
For real, though, I want to know: What sets your heart on fire?
