YO! What is up my home slices?!? Hope things are going magical for you right now! You should be out of school by now which means hot summer days in the sun and infamous relaxed summer nights under the stars with good company. Well, like most people, as I continue to go about life, I learn things.. mostly by trial and error...here are some of the things i've learned this month.
1. If you ever score an epic goal in soccer on an astro-turf field, don't celebrate by running and sliding on your knees like they do in the FIFA world cup...you will not slide, instead you will face plant and rip your knees to shreds. Even if you are playing against an almost professional Nicaraguan team.
2. Don't stay out in a zip line course in the middle of the Nicaraguan Jungle into the early morning hours or you might get shot at.
3. You know you are an American when you are on an international flight and they start handing out customs cards and the first thing you do is assume they are handing out menu's to serve you lunch.
These are some of the things I have learned this month, some awkward, some scary, and some just epic. But there was something I pulled away from this month that God revealed to me that I must share with all of you awesome people, and that is our simple need to be loved. I had the privilege of spending a week in Nicaragua serving at an orphanage in the mountains of Managua. This experience was unlike any other mission trip I had ever been on. Most mission trips consist of an unhealthy amount of labor and vacation bible school's and a schedule that would seem impossible to fit into one day, but somehow you do, and then you repeat it the next day. This trip was very different though, it was focused on simply loving the kids. Sure we had a schedule and we helped replace a roof, but what we were doing for the majority of the day was being there for the children, building relationships with them, loving on them the way Jesus loved on us.
As orphans, these children don't get the privilege of being loved on by their parents or growing up around people to look up to; people to set an example. The kids soaked up every bit of time we had together with them. For them, they were just happy to be in someones arms, or to be the center of someones attention for once in their life, to feel important and most of all, to feel loved. You see, as humans, we long to be loved. I think our deepest desire is to be loved. To feel like we belong somewhere and to be accepted. For one week out of the entire year, we got to give love, show love, and live love to these orphans, and the result was beautiful.
There was one moment that topped every other moment I had down there, and that was when we put on a last minute vacation bible school for a group of children at a small church about an hour outside of the orphanage that I stayed at. In between the madness of beach balls, giving piggy back rides, and being a human jungle gym, we had story time. We gathered in a circle and and began to read the story of Jonah and the whale. As the story began, and little boy hopped into my lap and just sat there in my arms. He didn't know my name and I didn't know his, but that didn't matter, for once he was being loved, and that was all that mattered in the moment. He was so content in my arms that we could have sat there for hours taking in the moment. When it was time to leave, he handed me a friendship bracelet right off of his own wrist.
As Christians, and just people in General, we long to be loved. Sometimes we look for that love in the wrong places though. We look for them in things of this world like people, money, men, women, blah blah blah...as I reflected on this experience, I asked myself how does this apply to my walk with God? God longs to have a relationship with us and it not only hurts us, but hurts him more when we run away from him in an attempt to find love and contentedness in other things. We are like the orphan in this picture...we long to be held and loved, but we are never going to find that contentedness until we find it in God alone. Can you imagine the smile on God's face when we finally turn to him for joy and contentedness? I bet he is the happiest dude ever when he gets to hold his son or his daughter in his arms and just say "Rest child, you don't have to search any longer. I am all you will ever need and I will lever let you down or leave you." Man that is a beautiful picture!
Alright dudes and dudettes, im sure you're tired of me babbling..although if you made it to this it means you have read everything above which either means you enjoyed it, or you were really just bored to death and had nothing to do...either way, thanks for stopping by The Better Half of Me, and I cant wait until we meet again! Cheers!
-R
No comments:
Post a Comment