waking up

Today at Google:

Billy: So what do you wanna do? Wanna go back and play with my Wii?

Warren: …

Okay. Meet my sexiest new friend.

Today I felt everyone’s pain and joy.

It was really crazy, and on my crazy days list, it’s up there.

Please read this for your own good.

Hope, Fear, and Freedom

From my entry in our Japan team Xanga…

***

Anyway, we’re back. We’re half-alive, but we’re back. And the re-adjustment phase is supposed to begin now. Sleep cycles screwed up, not feeling hungry at dinner time, resurgence of mixed emotions, and heart-longings through flashbacks plague all of us five, I think. We’re all “returning to our lives.” As soon as the plane landed, we pulled out our cellphones. Some of us had burritos. We met for worship this morning. Sarah, Sergio, and Billy, return to work tomorrow morning…

But what is supposed to return to normal, and what is changed forever?

What is normal, even?

To be compeletely honest, for me, normal is waking up in the morning without a sense of purpose. Normal is thinking about what I will have for lunch today as I surf the web to kill time. Normal is vegging out, working when I have to, playing because I want to, praying only when I have to. But normal for me, is obviously not normal for someone on mission.

Going to Japan with people back home giving $1500 of their hard-earned to pave your way for two weeks of craziness… you just don’t consider what is normal anymore. You think about who you might meet that day, who might be open to the Gospel, what you will do when the opportunity arises for you to express your faith, whether through gift-boxes or through conveying Scripture through words, smiling at a lady in the grocery store or through sharing a song about longing for the presence of God… You praise God and thank Him for yesterday… You think about all the things that happened today that you can’t wait to pray for… You think about the rest you will need in preparation for tomorrow. You dream about what will happen in few months when you’re not around. You cry about what will happen if years do not see change. You put yourself at God’s mercy, and rely on His grace.

Does this call for a radical perspective change? Or is it just two weeks to be dealt with as two weeks?

Yes, we need to make money, make rent, make mortagages, make investments, and care for the things entrusted to us — family, friends, physical and emotional health. All of humanity struggles enough with just that. But like I said before we left… God believes in us. Don’t we mock God in selling ourselves short?

How much time do we really ask God for our daily bread and His Kingdom, and how much time to we spend just consumed by the idea of survival? How much of the call to live a backward life do we really embrace? I like the part where it says how “whoever believes in him shall have eternal life,” and the part about how “God works all things together for the good of those who love him.” But what about the poor inheriting the Kingdom? What about the part about gaining the whole world but losing your soul? And how about turning the other cheek? Or loving your enemies?

The call to follow Jesus is straightforward and necessary, and the practicals of our lives should fall into its gravity. Not the other way around.

So, bring your kids to the playground. Make smart investments. Go to concerts and museums. Eat and drink with your friends. But let us love God and love people in all of it. And let us be on mission right here, right now.