12 days shy of 9 {matul}

I've been doing a lot of reminiscing lately. Thinking back to the first time of things that I do every day here.

Like the first time I took a city bus. I'd been here for five days, it was Carnaval weekend, and we were going to hike Sugarloaf mountain with a Brazilian friend who didn't speak any English. The bus was packed! I didn't understand anything that people were saying around me. The city felt huge and mysterious, like I would never figure it out.

Or like the first time we drove to our community with our city coordinator, and then were shown around the community. It was dreadfully hot, and there were hills. We went in a circle, up the hill one way and back down using a completely different path. I couldn't even begin to piece together how the two routes related to each other. I was confused and uncertain, a little terrified but really excited about moving into this community. I still didn't understand what people were saying around me, and my brain was getting super tired from trying to figure it out.

It was a grand adventure that I was embarking on, and the adventure part is my favorite. I like exploring and discovering my way back after venturing into a new territory. Now I walk these streets like this is my community. And I take the bus everyday without even thinking about it because I have to. It's lost a bit of the adventure aspect. And I've been sad about that. It doesn't feel fun and exciting anymore. But instead, it's becoming home. I am, slowly but surely, making this place my home. Sometimes it is a fight to make it a good home for me, but I'm working on it, and I have to believe that God is working on it too.

I love adventure, I've always known that. But I'm discovering how much I love having roots. It's something I never realized about myself before. I'm working on giving myself roots here, making this place comfortable and really like another home to my soul.

when we are accustomed to choosing

So, I was recently given the advice to "Do whatever God puts in front of you." It's a good little piece of advice. One that I like to tell myself I'm always doing, that a lot of people like to tell themselves they are doing. The hard part for me has been figuring out what God puts in front of me and what I put in front of myself.

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Being of the privileged white-american background that I am, I have been afforded choice in nearly everything I have ever done. College, Jobs, Church, Eating, Shopping, you name it, I have had choices. Choices that a lot of people in the world simply don't have. This even finds it way into how I serve God.

Whenever I think about serving God, I always want to serve him the best possible way. The way that I have always defined the word "best" in this case, meant the most needed way. When I look at the scriptures and the world around me, what is most needed by the world from the people of God. Is it compassion? Justice? Is it combatting the sex-trafficking industry? Or urban poverty? India? Haiti? Nairobi? Brazil?

I was doing my normal thing, observing all that was around me so that I could figure out how to best contribute to the situation. I wanted to be as helpful as I could be. The more I looked around the more I realized that there were countless ways that were incredibly needed. I kind of went through that paralyzed phase where everything feels hopeless. Then someone else told me to just choose something, because it's better to be moving and going than to just there.

So, I got up and I choose to be a part of the MATUL, a program that pushes me into the doing of ministry, when I'm so much more comfortable thinking and theorizing about ministry. It was a good choice for me and I have a learned so much from it.

But that choice, that option to pick from a myriad of options in how I serve God, displays my privilege. I have become so accustomed to my privilege that I often don't even see what it is that God puts in front of me. This is a lesson I am learning from my community. They don't have the privilege and the opportunity that I have. Serving God for them, has only ever been about doing what God puts in front of them. 

Often times what God puts in front of me doesn't make sense. It seems miniscule in relation to all the other ways I think I could be serving, ways that my logic tells me would be more helpful or beneficial to the world. But that, right there, is the problem. I am trying to play God, by observing and basing my work off of my own logic and conclusions, I am trying to do God's job. When in reality, the things God puts in front of us will rarely make logical sense in the grand scheme of things. But he is God, and he works all things together through us in mysterious and (seemingly) illogical ways. Our job is trust. Our job is to be faithful to the work God has put before us.