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.