When I was 6 I desperately wanted to learn how to swim. My mom and dad would teach me how to move my arms, float, all that good stuff. One day I'm leaning over the deep end, and...SPLASH. I fall in. My first instinct is, you guessed it, sheer panic. I look up to see my mom standing there and I am sure she is about to put her arms in to save me. To my unpleasant surprise she just says- "Swim up! Swim up!" It's like I knew how to do it, we had gone over the motions, but once I was head under I froze, scared out of my mind.
A little over a year ago I became so hungry for the Word. I wanted to learn more about Jesus, and what the scriptures really say about the way a Christians' life should look. I felt like I learned so much by just opening my bible every day and asking God to really show me, teach me, love me how you intended to. And so He did. Because that's what God does when you ask. He gives. Passages about the oppressed, injustice, the homeless poor were some that I really wanted to dive in to. Anyone can look at our world and see that it is broken, but I wanted to know how to react to that.
"Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh and blood?" Isaiah 58:6,7
The scriptures were certainly alive to me on my college campus, but as we walk the streets of Kampala I see more clearly the homeless poor and my own flesh and blood staring me in the face. God has taught me, has given me revelation, and showed me His ways. I feel the need to be honest with anyone who might be reading this. God has taught me how to swim. But sometimes I feel like I'm in the deep end, and I've forgotten how to move my arms. I'm scared to think that God could really be calling me into the most desperate situations possible to take off my swimmies, and jump.
Lately, I have gotten caught up in the question- "Well God you haven't shown me exactly what I'm supposed to do here after 6 months, so what is it? Huh? Huh?!!!" When I read Isaiah 58 last night under my little mosquito net, God told me something. He said it very clearly, without a doubt. He told me to share my bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into my house.
It's go time, so to speak. God hasn't just taken my swimmies off, He has popped them. SPLASH. :)
"No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." Luke 9:62
"If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them." Hebrews 11:15,16
"Katie, what about our lives has ever looked normal?! Sometimes you just gotta jump." -Mallory Short
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