You would think a generation raised watching Wizard of Oz would be more familiar with the concept of being content with where you are. And yet, as I look around at my peers I find over and over again in them, and in myself, a desire for the extreme.
Browse
through Amazon and you will see book after book with extreme titles.
The
Radical Question
Crazy
Love
The
Explicit Gospel
Risk
is Right
Reckless
Faith
The
Insanity of Obedience
Even
the books about “contentment” and “intentional living” and “simplicity” seem
like they are trying to tell us how to be content with where we are. And yet
they all spend a whole lot of time talking about the writer’s accomplishments,
her speaking engagements, and her blog readership.
I
understand. I do. We were raised in the suburbs in evangelical churches where
mediocrity and apathy were rampant. In an attempt to challenge us and motivate
us were fed a steady diet of youth camps and conferences that called us to the
mission field and exhorted us in our rolls as ambassadors and champions for Christ.
We were called to be Jesus Freaks and change the world. We went to Christian
colleges and spent our weekends study theology and doing VBS with kids in low
income housing.
If
you were a college female in the early 2000s, chances are you wanted to do
mission work in an inner city, work with teen moms, or start a magazine for
teenage girls helping them “find their identity in Christ”. We went to small
groups and talked about our passions and somewhere along the way we may have
met a young man who was just as "radical" as we were.
We
graduated, we got married, we got jobs “for now” to pay of student loans and
wait for God to call us where He “really” wanted us. And we woke up five years
later with two or three kids thinking that it would have been easier to follow
Christ being a missionary in the 10-40 window then is raising a family in the
suburbs on one income.
We fantasied about sacrificing for God but somehow this
isn’t what we had in mind. When we thought about changing diapers day in and
day out to further the kingdom it was in an orphanage in Uganda, not a two
bedroom apartment in Virginia. When we dreamed about sharing the gospel with
young minds it was during VBS in Mexico not in a minivan driving to the grocery
store.
Chances
are I will never know what it is like to be a missionary in another country or
to raise my own support so I further the Kingdom in an inner city. But, I do
know that the life I am living now takes a lot of courage and grace and
commitment. To wake up every day and do the same thing, with little thanks; it
may not be glamorous but it is the work put before me. I may not be saving orphans
off of the street or writing for an audience of thousands, but I am providing safety
and security to three little girls who depend on me to live this life with as
much passion as I claimed to have in college.
What if, the most radical thing I do is wake up and be fully
committed to whatever task is in front of me?
Essentially the same scenario here. We are convicted from what we understand through the Bible that what is most important is prioritized as follows: relationship with God, relationship with our spouse, taking care of our children the way God wants us to, and serving God in our career/ministry. A couple of years ago we were filtering our overseas missionary desire through that and we saw that because for us we felt that was more of a dream than a calling from God, it feel into the fourth category and needed to be approached in light of what that meant for us as a result. Maybe we can talk about this in person sometime though, I really enjoyed your post. Thanks for sharing.
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