Dear Friends and Family,
These past 2 months have been a blur…finishing up school and
picking my major, going to Rwanda and seeing the victory of Christ in the midst
of a genocide, hiking the 15,000 ft Mt. Elgon, a mountain that became a real
battle of choosing joy and faith instead of despair and fear…all of this and so
much more. (Oh and to let you know –
that battle ended in victory.) And now I
am home, and my adventure in Uganda has officially come to an end. However,
the lessons that I have learned and convictions I have received are still with
me and will hopefully continue living on – making Uganda not the end, but the
beginning of an incredible journey of living out my faith in response to God’s
incredible love for me. To everyone who
asks me how it was, all I can say is, it was truly the time of my life - a time
in which I found my identity rooted in Christ, and found that this was truly a
good, abundant life!
At the end of my semester at UCU, I wrote a capstone paper,
summarizing all that I had learned and writing down in words pretty much the
vision for how I want to live my life. I
wanted to share with you the introduction of it - and if any of you want to
read more, just email me and I can send you the whole thing:)
How do you live faithfully in a fallen and broken
world? In essence, that’s what I came to Uganda to figure out. For
the past few years, God had been revealing to me His heart for the poor and
broken, and I believed that in order to faithfully respond, I had to drop
everything and follow Christ into the jungles of somewhere far away in order to
“do missions.” In coming to Uganda; however, I found that contrary to this, God
was not calling me to a vocation, but to a way of life. Rather than
going to another country to share the gospel and solve poverty, God was calling
me to take the gifts and passions that He placed within my hands, and
faithfully use them to bring beauty and life into the world that it might have
hope. He was calling me to live out my faith not individually,
but in community with the church. And above all, he was calling me
to generously love those that God had placed in my life. And hence I
was given the vision for how I was to live faithfully in a broken world: that
through faith, hope and love, I would be a living witness of the abundant and
transformational life God has for us.
So there it is! What
does that mean now, though?
Well, first of all, it means that I want relationships, and
not efficiency, to be what motivates how I live. I can rest knowing that
I'm God's beloved - and I don't have to DO anything! Rather than living
by clock-time, I want to take time to be still, as well as to be present in the
moment with the people God has given me. This is a pretty freeing
reality, but I know I have to work at it daily to not fall back into my old
habits. Secondly, I want to make my faith something I live out not just
individually, but in community. Hopefully I'll start praying with some of
my siblings, or start up a bible study with one of my friends. I also
want to become involved with my church as well - for I am called not to be a
witness of Christ's love alone, but with others. If others will know we
are christians by our unity, this is a pretty important thing for me to do!!
Thirdly, I want to live generously and simply in community.
I have seen the inequalities between the rich and the poor, and it calls me to
action. This can easily result in my giving away all my clothes to a
shelter and deciding to support some kid overseas, but what I found is that
this isn't want Christ is calling me to. Shane Claiborne says,
"Jesus is not seeking distant acts of charity. He seeks concrete
acts of love." Giving clothes may help a person, but it doesn't
result in transformation or in the offering of a radical new community.
Rather, it allows me as a wealthy american to remain separated from the
poor, to manage inequalities, but not dismantle them. (Shane Claiborne) Instead
of this, why can't I actually get to know the poor - as friends? When
this happens, suddenly being generous with my money or living simply won't be a
guilty act or desire to be pious; rather, it will be what happens when I fell
in love with someone across class lines! And so, my goal is now to get to
know the poor - and the rest will follow. My teacher wisely said,
"When you love God (gratitude) and seek relationships with others (across
class lines), your eyes will be opened to new ways of living out your
convictions."
And so thats where I am now, wanting to keep Christ at
the center of my life, with the vision of being a witness of the abundant life
God has for us. It's exciting to have my faith become something that isn't just
about my own inner peace and satisfaction, but rather something that effects my
whole way of life. It is my vision for how I want to live, one in which I
respond to the norms of this day by offering a joyful alternative to it - and
hopefully invite others to do the same.
Well, thanks for reading my blog and journeying with me on
my Ugandan adventures. It was a pleasure being able to share with you not
only some of my treasured stories of family and dancing, but also some of my
struggles and convictions about life and how to live faithfully in it. I
love you all and can't wait to see some of you soon!
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