The Paradox of Life

I love being part of the community at WABC were everybody knows my name and they're always glad I came (CHEERS!) and yet tonight, I just wanted to be part of the crowd, to focus solely on worshiping the Lord. I didn't even want to say hello to anyone.

Foreign missionaries spend so much time, energy, and study assimilating to a foreign culture, just to get the point that I'm at when I walk out my front door. I used to wish that I had a more normal life, that my parents were still married, that my father wasn't gay and that I could have gone to Christian high school. And yet because God works all things together for good, I find that my life experience makes me much more suited to minister to my own culture than I would be had I actually gotten to live the sheltered life that I longed for.  I can now see that it's entirely possible that Russia isn't the place were God wants me to minister, that the ordinary life I didn't want, may not be so ordinary after all.  And yet every time I closed my eyes yesterday I found myself in Moscow during that summer. Five years ago, I wasn't 26,  I didn't work at PC nor was I member of WABC, instead I was 21, still in college and anxious about my future, but no amount of anxiety could steal my joy about finally being in Russia, a place I'd been yearning to visit since I was 14.

I want to give all of my life and all that He has given me back to the Lord. I actually wish that my provisions truly were daily and yet I'm blessed beyond measure (both spiritually and physically). I even have a retirement fund with a $50.00 payroll deduction and company matching.

I want to live in obedience to Christ to bring glory to God and yet I don't want anyone, most of all myself, to think that I'm righteous. I might do righteous things or a have a few unselfish moments from time to time, but any righteousness one might see in me is the light of Christ shining through this cracked pot.

My mother is back in the hospital. It's not serious (I hope). She has fever and Lord willing she'll be back home in a few days. I fear that she'll spend eternity without Christ, more than her actual death. I find myself wishing that He'd made salvation simpler, that He'd made himself undeniably evident to the world. I know that we are His creation and that He is certainly free to do with us whatever He wishes and yet I wonder why He made eternity without Him even an option. Why allow me to love my parents if this life may be all we have together.  And yet I know that He couldn't have made salvation any simpler, that faith in Christ is both the least and the most that we can do. And that He's made himself so evident that everyone in eternity will be without excuse. It's because the decision for Christ is so simple, so personal, and so life changing that I can't make that decision for anyone else.

These paradoxes are not bad, they just make life what it is, they're what it means to be human, to be a Christian in a fallen world.