The Path Into the Unknown

I love reading stories of early explorers. The hardship, the triumph, the excitement, the mystery, the audacity of venturing into the unknown. As a personality who seems to have an unnatural love of change, the idea of going somewhere we don’t yet know is surprisingly unsettling.

I resonate with explorers. Even while hiking, I seem to always make my way to the front of our family because I just want to see what’s around the next bend. I want to see what’s just ahead. I want to just explore and get to the ‘there’ we have been hiking towards.

I think in this missions journey we’re on, it turns out that I’m just the same. I can’t stand just waiting and wondering, I just want to see what’s ahead. But of course, I can’t.

Excited by change, daunted by the tasks ahead, and confounded by the mystery of all that God has in store for us, I have to yet remain here. In this moment. Waiting for ‘it all’ to be revealed. It’s a constant effort for me to be fully present here, enjoying all that I am surrounded by, when my heart has already landed in a new land, with a new people, doing a work that I know God has pre-destined for me to do.

Yet that is all we ever have. The right here and right now. The work of loving my neighbor, of calling that friend, of giving flowers to that person, of being unconditionally loving to this child, of making another meal, of assessing another patient in the hospital, and so it goes.

Our times are in His hands. We are but a vapor, a breath. Our lives are like a mist, the Bible tells us. So though I want to imagine and dream, plan and think about all that God has in store for us somewhere else, I know that HIs work for me isn’t someplace else, but always right here in front of me.

So as you watch me walk out this strange journey we are on, could you remind me to be fully present right here? Cause tomorrow doesn’t even exist yet and like a vapor, we aren’t even guarenteed another day.

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