It’s official, we are halfway through our time here in Nicaragua! As I write this I realize I’m not at all sure how I want that sentence to read. Is it a “Yay, we’re halfway home!” kind of thing, or is it more of a “What?! We’re halfway done?!” Every time I read it over I change my mind, so I think I’ll leave the interpretation up to you.
Being at the halfway point also brought up a few questions for my team, such as: Have we been making a difference? Are we doing all that God would have us do? Will the bugs ever stop biting us?
While that last question is certainly valid, the ones that have posed the biggest issue to my team and I are definitely the first two. It seems we are all struggling with contentment, and maybe even that we are content when we feel we should be unsettled.
You see, our days here have been quite routine. We get up, have quiet time with the Lord, go to breakfast, do our chores, have some free time, go to lunch, have more free time, play with the kids, go to dinner, talk with our team, then go to bed. Then we wake up and do it all over again. The routine rarely varies, and much of the time the tasks we are given are mundane: sweeping, painting, mopping, scrubbing dishes. Not necessarily things that make you feel you are making a positive contribution to the kingdom of God.
When you set out for a mission trip like this, the tendency can be to think you will be on an adventure, trekking deep into the jungle to win lost people for God. The reality tends to look a lot more like sweeping.
So how do you reconcile those ideas? How do you feel like you are doing all that God wants you to do when you are scrubbing that morning’s rice-and-bean breakfast off a plate?
I think the answer might lie in remembering that ministry is not a task for me to do, but a way for me to live. My ministry is not cleaning toilets or weeding gardens, but the person I am while I do those things and long after they are done.
So really, the most important thing I can be doing here is working on me and making sure that when people look at me (with twigs in my hair, dirt on my skin, or bleach on my skirt), they see Jesus.
This realization had the unexpected side effect of making me grateful for what had previously seemed like an overabundance of free time. What I had previously seen as time to use up by reading, doing laundry, or talking to my new friends is transforming into time to study God’s Word, listen quietly, and fellowship. These are not times of stagnation, but of growth.
We all need time to be still and rest in the Lord. Elijah figured out early on that God was not found in an earthquake or fire but in a gentle whisper. If we spend our entire lives running from task to task, making noise, when are we going to be quiet enough to hear that whisper? And how are we to act and change and grow unless we hear what the Lord has to teach us?
Ecclesiastes 4:6 tells us “Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” This can easily be taken as practical advice that if you work too hard you will burn out, but I think there’s more to it than that. It is a reminder that we are not placed on this earth merely to work and die, but also to sit and listen quietly to God’s gentle whisper so that when we do die we have done more than “chase after the wind.”
