Lessons Learned in the Van

I've always loved road trips.  I love packing the car to best utilize every square inch of space.  I love putting together a snack box to treat myself to fresh fruit or veggies halfway down the road.  I even love the crappy gas station coffee as I watch the sun rise over the highway after driving for 3 hours.  I love making long playlists for different moods of the road:  mellow for the very beginning of the trip, but building quickly into golden classic rock songs to belt out as the highway stretches on to the horizon.  Or maybe I'm the only one who does that...that's okay too.

This past weekend, I got to drive down to El Paso with my church.  28 of us from our church piled into SROM's 2 new (used) 15-passenger vans early last week and started the 14-hour drive down south.  It reminded me a bit of the many hours I spent in similar vans on youth group trips in high school!  It was a great opportunity to get to connect with people in my church that I previously hadn't had a chance to get to know very well.  (It's amazing how quickly you can get to know people when you're crammed in the back seat together fighting the beginnings of feeling carsick.)

We arrived in Texas around 7:30pm on Thursday night and were warmly greeted by our church family in El Paso.  As exhausted as we were from the road trip, it was such a joy to connect and mingle with brothers and sisters in El Paso, from Kansas City, and from Fort Collins.  Even now as I reflect on it, our church family network is pretty amazing!  Ray, the pastor in El Paso, stood up to welcome us, orient us on the building we were staying in, and give us a basic schedule for the weekend (a very basic and very flexible schedule).  

Our Laramie church family had planned on going to Juarez to work with a children's ministry on Friday afternoon, which gave us time to solidify plans on Friday morning.  We also had an amazing time of prayer and worship on the roof of the school building!  It was amazing to get to look over the city of El Paso, and then turn and look over the border to Juarez.  We prayed for our time there and for the ministries on both sides of the Rio.  Piling again into our trusty vans, we crossed quickly over into Mexico and jumped in to help with the kids.  

I've done children's ministry in Hispanic cultures before, and every time I deeply wish I could speak Spanish!  But I'm also reminded of the love language of kids: playing.  We set up different games for the kids, had a puppet show, and painted faces, all with the heart to just love on the kids as much as we could!  I got to work at the face painting table, and quickly memorized the three most popular requests:  mariposa (butterfly), estrella (star), and corazón (heart).  As the afternoon passed, I slowly started remembering little bits and pieces of the Spanish I've collected from past trips...and it's amazing how quickly I forget them again!  

Saturday we split up and worked at two food distributions that the church in El Paso runs.  We spent the first two hours packing food into plastic bags for people to pick up as they came through.  The actual distribution is open from 10-12 the first Saturday of every month, and serves about 300 people at each location every month.  Along with caring for the physical needs of providing food, the church also offers to pray for each person that comes through.  Many smile, thank us for the food, and decline prayer.  But there are several who came through who eagerly accepted prayer.  Ray coached us to not fall into the trap of simply praying for their immediate situation (for a sickness, for provision of a job, for the healing of a family member).  He reminded us that the greatest thing we can offer them is Jesus, and it is Jesus who works all things (including immediate challenges and trials) together for His glory and His kingdom.

As we were packing the food, I kept thinking about Mary and Martha preparing for Jesus and his disciples.  I am a Martha by nature...I'm most comfortable being busy and packing the food and getting things done.  It's much harder for me to be Mary and to be content to simply sit at Jesus' feet and love as he loved:  without a schedule.  Once we were done packing and the people started coming in for the food distribution, there wasn't much for me to do other than smile and welcome them, and thank them for coming.  The entire time, my internal thoughts were running along the lines of "Is this really the best use of my time?  Aren't there other projects I could be working on?  What else can I be doing?"  But Jesus doesn't call us to always be doing.  He calls us to love the person in front of us.  And loving people means stopping myself from seeing people as another project to add to our missions trip to justify the long drive and the expense, and to look them in the eye and love them as Jesus loved them.  Without agenda, without impatience, without busyness.

Spending 14+ hours each way in a van provides ample time for reflection (another thing that I love about road trips).  As we were driving back on Sunday, I thought about what my agenda had been for the weekend, and what ended up being God's agenda.  The leadership in my church had much less of a project mentality, and much more of a person mentality.  We went to El Paso to connect with our church family and to support them in their ministry.  We didn't go so we could leave feeling like we had accomplished some sort of project; we didn't go because the church in El Paso needed us for any project of labor.  We went because they are our family, and we love them.

Sip, Don't Guzzle

One of the reasons that I love wilderness ministry so much is the near-endless metaphors I see for life.  One of my dear friends has worked as a guide at YoungLife Wilderness Ranch, and I think they say it well:  "Life is like the trail, and the trail is like life."

One of the reminders I need most consistently is that of daily dependence.  The truth of it is, we were never made to be "one and done" creatures.  Our bodies aren't made that way, our hearts aren't made that way, our spirits aren't made that way.  I get this reminder frequently in the wilderness when I have to remind myself (and others) to be continually sipping from water bottles.  To be frank, staying hydrated can be incredibly inconvenient.  I have to stop, dig out my water bottle, catch my breath, and try to sip carefully without dumping it all over myself.  (Okay, so it doesn't sound all that bad...but think about trying to drink from a full wide-mouthed Nalgene with a fully-loaded 85L pack on without losing your balance on a narrow, rocky trail.)  Not only that, but I have to make these stops frequently.  How much more convenient it would be to chug one or two water bottles with breakfast before hitting the trail and have that hydrate me for the day!  Unfortunately, our bodies can usually only process about a quarter of a gallon every hour; that's a maximum of 4 cups of water per hour.  Drinking a ton of water all at once won't really benefit me much at all, and it will mostly just pass through my system...leading to other inconveniences along the hike.  It's much more beneficial to be taking small sips here and there throughout the day.  (Thus the glorious invention of the hydration bladder!)

As we say on the trail, "sip, don't guzzle."  

It's easy for me to slip into the habit of working off my own strength during the week (or month...or year...) and fooling myself into thinking that I'll "catch up" with Jesus eventually.  When I invariably get behind on a year-long Bible reading plan, I brush it off with the thought that I'll just cram all of the week's readings in over the weekend.  If I haven't been spending regular time in prayer, I tell myself that I'll dedicate hours to journal and pray sometime soon...eventually.  (Here's hoping I don't try and extend this mentality to fasting...)  Sometimes in my 'urgent' mentality, staying dependent on the Lord can seem incredibly inconvenient.  I have to stop what I'm doing, dig out my Bible or my journal, carve time out of my too-hurried schedule, and sit and be quiet and wait on Jesus.  Not only that, but I have to remind myself to stop and be still frequently.  It would be so much more convenient to be able to just load up my spirit on time with the Lord and have that carry me through until I feel thirsty again!  Inconveniently, my spirit needs more than just a 'one and done' relationship with the Lord.  Fortunately, He is not satisfied with just my weekends or the time that deem free enough to spend with Him.  Christ wants all of my life, and He wants me to invite Him into every corner.

In my relationship with Christ, I need to fight against the instinct to guzzle.  I benefit so much more from taking "sips" throughout the day:  listening to Scripture while at work, finding things to thank Him for throughout the day, stopping to see the sunrise or set while marveling at His colors painted on the clouds, praying for students before making course check-in calls, spending mornings reading from His Word, journaling regularly, praying without ceasing.  These are all things that I wish I could say I did with regularity.  I wish I could say that I don't see this ongoing need as an inconvenience, or worse, as a challenge to my independence.  ("You're telling me I need You every minute of every day?  I bet I don't!  I bet I can do it all by myself!")  

If I refuse to acknowledge my need for water along the trail, I grow weak, get headaches, and become a liability to my travel group.  If I refuse to acknowledge my need for Christ throughout my day, I burn out, become irritable and frustrated, and grow distant from the community around me.  If I try to guzzle too much water at once, it passes uselessly through my system and makes me have to pee a lot.  If I try to cram all of my time with Jesus into a few short hours once or twice a week, I don't really retain anything and end up not really seeing how He wants to change my habits and thought patterns.  

Lord, give me the grace to sip from Your Word throughout the day.  Remind me of how You are the only one that truly satisfies my thirst.  Let me see this ongoing need for You as a blessing rather than an inconvenience.  Let me be like a tree planted by streams of water, constantly soaking You in and growing in You.  Guard me against self-dependence and free me from the busyness I so eagerly embrace.  Give me quiet times with You, and may I be satisfied only by You.

Oh to Grace how great a debtor

If, as the ancient hymn asserts, I'm daily a debtor to Grace, to whom or what am I indebted? 

Like most of my millennial peers, when I don't know the answer to something, I find myself typing "www.google.com" before I even have a clear understanding of how to phrase my search.  (What Would Google Say? perhaps becoming the new go-to for my generation...more thoughts on that later.)  Well, a Google search offers audio pronunciation, phonetic spelling, a fairly thorough etymology, translation options, and multiple definitions of the word "grace."  Nestled in all of that, the closest thing I could find to a description of Grace worthy of debt was "the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings."  For a quick definition from Google, I think that's actually pretty good!  But knowing the definition is much different from understanding the concept.

In his book What's so Amazing about Grace?, author Philip Yancey spends about 300 pages trying to recapture the deep meaning of Grace, something he describes as "the last best word."  In his first chapter, he quotes a counselor who beautifully describes why Grace has lost much of its meaning:

"Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these:  the failure to understand, receive, and live out God's unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people... We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace.  But that's not the way we live.  The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions."  (italics mine)

I can have all of the tools of theology at my disposal in regards to understanding Grace, but unless I allow it to change my thinking and my habits I am no better off than a Google search, parroting back the definition without any meaning.  Perhaps it is hard to understand Grace because there is something in our nature that inherently does not want to accept Grace.  It offends our sense of "I can do it all by myself!"  We much prefer a system that asserts that we earn what we want and we keep what we earn.  In this 'bootstraps' mentality, we feel like we have a right to whatever it is we have worked for; Grace demands that we recognize that it is something we cannot and will not ever earn.  

In our relationship with God, we try to avoid the debt to Grace by working our way to Him.  As Yancey says,

"Even when we have committed a wrong, we want to earn our way back into the injured party's good graces.  We prefer to crawl on our knees, to wallow, to do penance, to kill a lamb - and religion often obliges us."

Legalism and religion often offer ways in which we can try to make deposits in our account with God.  Contrasted with faith and relationship (in which we have nothing but God's Grace to rest on), legalism feels secure because it tells us that we have something to offer, that we bring something to this transaction, that we can be in some sort of control.  Legalism lets us think we can avoid the debt to Grace, because who likes going into debt?  Relying on Grace, however, means that we give up anything we thought we could offer, and we approach God simply and purely on the basis of Christ's sacrifice.  

Not on our sacrifice, not on our terms, not in our own merit.  

"Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ..." (Philippians 3:8-9, ESV)

This is the daily debt we owe to Grace:  that we count anything we once thought we could offer as "rubbish" and come to God with nothing but a desperate prayer that He will see us as covered by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  And He does.  He extends Grace to us, and we receive "the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings."   If, as Yancey quotes, "we read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace.  But that's not the way we live," we rob ourselves of experiencing that "free and unmerited favor" and we instead spend our lives striving to earn a place at God's table...something we can never hope to do.