Where do you start?

Where do you start talking about a trip that has changed your life? Well, maybe that’s not the best way to say it. It’s not that my life itself has changed—I still came back home, I still came back to Redding. I still came back to Simpson, the Stirring, my community of friends and family. And I still came back to my job, my school work, and my morning routine of gym-and-coffee-shop. So really, my life hasn’t changed much at all. But my heart has. Where do you start talking about a trip that has changed your heart? That’s probably a harder question to answer than the first one.

I guess for one thing… I think about how many times I used the word “my” in that paragraph above. And I think sometimes we use the word “my” not out of a desire to communicate that we possess something, but rather, that we belong. Saying, “my computer,” for example, can mean something quite different than “my father.” The first is most likely communicating that the computer is “my possession,” but the second is probably full of connotations that say “this is the father I belong to.” One comes from the desire to own…the other, from the desire to be owned by. In this day and age, do we even want to be “owned” though? In this independent culture, do we dare give into that deep desire to say we belong to something or someone? I think that is a part of my heart that has changed… I think I would rather belong than possess. Of course it’s ok to have things—I still have my computer, my phone, my car, and yes, my cup of coffee--but if these things belong to me, and I belong to something or someone else, than these things are not mine alone. I’m beginning to understand why we say “everything I have is God’s.” I am God’s. So what I do with what I have will either misrepresent or actually be God’s Hand possessing and doing that same thing with those things. OK. Break.

Now, say I come back to Redding and go to my church (notice the “my”—I can tell you right now, that is to communicate my desire to belong there, not possess it). I'm wondering if and how I really do belong there. But assuming I belong to God and so do others…then maybe we also all belong to each other, whether we want to or not. Or maybe—we only belong in a place when we belong to the people in that place. And ultimately, we all only truly belong in Heaven don't we? because we all only truly belong to God and His Community of Love. However, while we’re here on earth perhaps there are those communities...those places of heaven breaking into earth, where we get to taste the encouragement and glimpse the hope and love that God's Kingdom is all about.

Anyway, all this is just scratching the surface of a way my heart has changed regarding possessions—and also relationships. I hope that even “my lifetime” becomes less idolized in my eyes. The hope that we encountered in Cambodia is one that reaches beyond my lifetime…because many of the healings that need to happen there are going to take quite the process. There are here-and-now healings, for sure, and they make all the difference in the world to each individual that they affect instantly. However, the “instant gratification” mentality needs to be held pretty loosely in such a place. The future generation is the country’s realistic hope. And just as God has provided hope to individual girls through ministry we worked with, I believe He wants to provide a community of hope to the whole nation. It is no longer a question of “my lifetime”—and whether or not I will see the fruit of the seeds being planted—but rather an assurance of God’s Redemption Plan and a faith in a God that patiently and still persistently calls out generations.

I believe Cambodia is as important to God as Redding. And if movements and “rivers of gold” can flow from this place—I believe they can not only reach to there, but find a new fire and out-pouring from there too. There is much healing needed…but all that means to me now is that it is a land of awesome potential, and that they are a people God cries out to grow.

The harvest… is MASSIVE. But some of the workers only sit in their chairs and dream of things that “probably won’t happen in my lifetime.” So why bother, right?