Today we take to the streets and neighborhoods of Nashville to share with the people we encounter the unconditional love of Jesus through our acts of compassion and service. On any given day, that's a pretty worthwhile "to do" list.
But today is different.
For many of the teenagers in our group, this their first experience in the inner-city. They are sleeping on the floor of a one hundred year old church building that has seen better days. For a visual reference, picture Disney's "Haunted Mansion." Their noses are being assaulted by aromas that are generally associated with your mom's 85 year old great aunt who lives with 15 stray cats.
To paraphrase Dorothy: We're not in the suburbs of OKC anymore.
We will be stretched.
We will be challenged.
Our preconceived notions about poverty and the poor will be completely reshaped.
And I couldn't be more excited.
Visualize any product that utilizes before and after pictures as part of their marketing. Currently, we are the before picture. For the most part, we are stereotype suburban America. I'm not exactly sure what the after picture will look like, but for those of us who choose to fully embrace this experience and totally surrender our wills to Christ this week, it will be radically different. Maybe - hopefully - even life-altering.
In a perfect world, every day of our spiritual pilgrimage with Christ should be life-altering. Each encounter with Christ should shape us more into his image than we were when we started. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Our busy schedules intrude and take over our day and we can never get it back. We are so busy "doing" that we forget the importance of "being."
To borrow a phrase from the U.S. Army, my prayer for our entire group is that "we will be all that we can be" and have a taste of what God created us to be.
As I said before, I'm not sure what we will exactly look like, but this I am sure of...
We will all be changed.
Soli Deo gloria.
Michael
Sent from my iPhone
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