There’s a fire that’s been simmering in me for a little bit now.
The flames are getting bigger.
The other day, I walked into the room where Kyle was after I read a very convicting blog post about Lent. I was crying and Kyle asked me why. “It’s just the fire in me growing, honey. The fire.”
“What fire?” he asked.
“The fire to change the world.” I responded. “I know. I’m crazy.” And I went on to scrub the dishes in the sink and cry because I had to DO something, right then, and that’s what was there to do.
Several things going on around me are helping to stoke the fire in me. Some of my own personal life experiences. Some, the experiences of others. You don’t have to look very far to see what I’m talking about. Even if you don’t live in a 3rd world country. Just open up Facebook or look at your Yahoo news reel.
Babies are dying.
Daddies are dying.
Mommies are in the hospital begging God for another breath.
Friends suffer another miscarriage.
Grandmothers have unexpected strokes.
Death.
Dying.
The World.
It’s almost suffocating, the world. Just Almost.
And just like that, I get a text message from a dear friend about lady bugs in her kitchen and pretty blue jays outside her window and I’m reminded of the Creator. The One who made the ladybugs, and the blue jays, and the babies and the Mommies and Daddies and the unborn babies and the Grandmothers. He made them.
He. Created.
And I’m slammed with the reminder that, I don’t have to change the world…. HE ALREADY DID.
He made LIFE.
And yet, these are the days we live in.
What do we do? What do I do about the flames burning my insides?
Mostly, I think it comes down to what we are doing about the fact that JESUS CAME TO CHANGE THE WORLD AND THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW ABOUT IT. Really and truly. There are people whose Daddies die and whose babies die and they are ALONE. They. Don’t. Know. These are the people who keep me up at night. The ones that don’t know that about 2000 years ago, the world was changed and that life isn’t supposed to be this way. THERE’S MORE.
The Bible talks about life being a vapor. Here today, gone tomorrow. What does this mean? It means that timing does not belong to mankind, and that our hope CANNOT be in anything other than the eternal power of Jesus and his life-giving, Heaven-filling, message of the Gospel.
I don’t want to just be content with being content. I’m not talking about being content with the lot The Lord gives you, we all have to do that. I’m saying there’s more to it than that. Inside that lot, what am I doing to spread the message?
Jesus said that He came that we may have LIFE and have it abundantly. Who in my “lot” needs to hear that the secret to that LIFE has nothing to do with this world and everything to do with the creator and what happens outside, before, and after this world?
I want to be like my Grandad, who has literally given his whole adult life to telling people about Jesus. First, as a medical missionary in Thailand. And then as doctor here in America, still telling his patients who can truly heal them. He gets it. The whole “Life being a vapor thing”. He’s made MUCH of his vapor.
I want to be like my Granny, who LOVES PEOPLE. Who hugs a lady at the grocery store she’s never met because she saw her trip and she knows that sometimes life is hard even when just trying to hobble out of the grocery store. And she knows that there is more. There’s MORE!
And y’all. I think we would be missing this WHOLE THING. The WHOLE THING if we didn’t actively engage in raising children who weren’t just content with being content.
I want to teach my kids to know that YES the world is sad and really really awful things happen every day in this world, but that there is HOPE. And I don’t just want them to know for themselves that the Life-giver is real. I want them to be mighty warriors who charge forward telling other people that He is real.
I want them to know that the antonym of “selfish” is the Gospel. And I want them to do something about it.
I want them to know that the Church cannot be defined by four walls and comfortable chairs but that it is MORE. Because I don’t just want them to learn how to sit quiet and be “good” in church, but to know that jumping up and down in praise with a “church” under a tree in Kenya is worship and is pleasing to God too.
I want to expand their world-view. Both locally to McKinney, Texas and also all around the world. I want them to see that the sick and dying aren’t just in Africa or India, they are in McKinney, Texas too. And that “lost people” isn’t just a Western idea but is a rampant world-wide crisis, because people are dying everywhere.
I want Laura Kate to know that The Lord has uniquely GIFTED her with an incredible imagination. Because someday, somewhere, there might be people who need a fresh, creative idea for how to push the message forward.
I want Shepherd to know that God gave him a tender, people-geared heart because someday, somewhere, he might come across a little boy whose daddy is dying who doesn’t know that there is HOPE.
I want Fischer to know that the Creator specifically made him to be fearless, because someday, somewhere God may just call him to do something that everyone else is afraid to do.
And YES YES YES I want to teach my children to be obedient. I want to teach my children to be obedient because when the day comes that God whispers in their ear the next great, hard, path that He wants them to take, I don’t want them to hesitate even for a second. Because that’s what we do with the fire burning our insides: we follow the voice of the life-giver.
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