Unplugging

My life has become everything I hate about the 21st century. Don't get me wrong. I love that I live when I live. I love that I have a BluRay player and an HD TV, but that I can remember my first microwave oven, my first VCR, and my first touch-tone phone. At the same time, I love that I had to learn how to use a card catalog, but I live in a world where I can get virtually any information I "need" in a matter of seconds. Still, I have come to embrace the distraction that results from the availability of all that information. Just this morning, when my wife walked out of the kitchen for just a second, I immediately reached for my blackberry. It's my habit so that I can try to catch up while she is out of the room because I have myself convinced that it makes me more attentive to her when she is with me. Well, on this occasion, I reached down to grab it and it wasn't there. It was still charging, and in that moment I realized that I have become so taken with my ability to stay plugged in that I have learned to abuse that ability. I have the ability, no, the propensity to distract myself from any meaningful interaction with myself or - more importantly - with God, all the while using my "need" to be in touch with the world as an excuse.

Acts 17:26, 27 says, "...26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us..." According to this passage of scripture, penned by Luke almost 2000 years ago, God chose for me to be born where I was and when I was. Why? So that I would seek Him, hoping to find Him. What has happened to me? What has happened to His plan? How is it that He ordained for me to live in 21st century America in order to seek Him and that I allow the wiles of 21st century America to help me avoid seeking Him? I would argue that we live in a time where distraction is an opiate like at no other time in history. I would also argue that it is the intention of the enemy, Satan, that this is so. Nonetheless, I praise God for that last little phrase from Acts 17:27, "Yet he is actually not far from each of us..." God put me here to seek Him, and the enemy, no doubt, works diligently to cultivate the affections of my heart for anything and everything else, but God, in His infinite grace, will not allow His plan to be thwarted. Just as the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10 (perhaps my favorite scripture), "But by the grace of God I am what I am..." He called me to this life knowing my evil inclination to deny Him, and He stands near to me, cultivating my heart toward love, stirring my affections to Himself, the only one really worthy of any affection at all. I pray that one day, I can declare with Paul, as 1 Corinthians 15:10 continues, "...and his grace toward me was not in vain."

This long introduction brings me to my thoughts about this trip. I have always believed that any short-term mission trip is- in a vacuum - much more beneficial to the missionary than those being served. To that point, I think I see some of God's design in having me on this trip, at this time, working itself out. We are going to an area of the world where internet and telephony are sparse, and we are going at a time when all communication will be cut off flatly. We will be in a remote part of Africa, cut off from the world and all the distractions I have learned to use (other people have certainly mastered other distractions at other times and in other places) to keep me from dealing with the One that really knows all the evils that still need to be confronted in my heart.

I am looking forward to this trip, well, as much as I can while I am consumed with school work, projects that I am managing for my company, and the myriad other things that feel more like loose ends that need tying up every day. I am looking forward to serving these sweet people that have committed the last year and a half of their lives to serving the Oromo people in Ethiopia. I am looking forward to serving the Oromo people themselves. I am looking forward to being a part of a long string of rich Americans that give up their lush lifestyles in the United States for just a little while to eat food that makes them sick and work in conditions that they never have to tolerate to serve people with illnesses we never see in the U.S. I am looking forward to doing all these things with joy, but this is not a selfless mission for me. I am hoping that God will use the inability to use being "plugged in" to the world to unplug from everything that matters, the physical ailments that may come and the discomfort of not being able to control the climate around me to break something loose in my heart. There are parts of my heart that I know are encrusted, but they have been that way for so long that I have no recollection of what was there. May God use this time to pluck us all from our comfort zones so that we can see the world from a different perspective.

Here are a couple of scenes from Dead Poets Society:


The impact Mr. Keating had on these boys lives had everything to do with changing their perspective. He got them out of their boxes and away from their conventions long enough that they were able to see things a little more clearly. For this, they transfer the admiration Walt Whitman had for Abraham Lincoln onto this school teacher, defiantly calling out to him, "O Captain My Captain!" If this ordinary man could inspire such admiration with just a token shift in perspective, then how much more can we all expect to be turned inside out by our Savior on this trip? This is my prayer for Ethiopia I. This is my prayer for myself, my wife, and our brothers and sisters that are going with us. May our great and glorious King be glorified in our hearts and through our lives.