"Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?"
"I am the way."
The common metaphor for life, both in the bible and elsewhere, is that it's all a bit like wandering. Sometimes we do so with direction, and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we find ourselves sure of our next step, and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we go the wrong way, losing ourselves down all the back alleys of life looking for the way back to what feels normal. To be a follower of christ is to find ourselves along this path, and to be told, "follow it." And along this path there are many obstacles, and many distractions and detours that seem to be calling out to us. Often we know the right way, and yet the flashing lights on the side of the road beckon us with enticement. But to be mature in our faith, (that is, to have a faith that is real) is to not only know what is right, but to do it. This is all very straightforward at some points; it's as though we find ourselves on mountaintops, and we see the road ahead stretched out before us in all clarity. Then we begin to follow it, and it takes us deep into the valleys below. We get down there, and the sun shines less and the fog comes in with the morning and what before seemed so clear and so obvious becomes muddled to the point of utter inner turmoil. And it's in these moments that our faith becomes our guide. We have seen from the very mountaintops in the days that have passed that the path is true, and though we don't know the destination apart from a simple promise, faith is taking the next step, even though you don't know what comes after it. For the more ambitious of us, this is a hard teaching. We want to see the greatness that is in store as a result of our obdeince. We want to be sure, and it's this very desire that leaves us often questioning everything.
God makes it clear, however, that obdeince is the means for everything good. Obedience isn't the goal, the goal is love. More than anything, God wants us to love him and to love each other. We show love for each other through our actions, but as for our love for God, he says over and over, "if you love me, you'll be obedient to me. you'll follow my commands. you'll be pliable, flexible, and humble. Sometimes you'll be doing one thing and then I'll tell you to do something else, and to be obedient means to drop everything in life that might seem important and do what I want you to do. You know those feelings in your heart that tell you to good and to love others and to live abundantly? I put those there. They aren't magical or imaginary."
It's hard to measure success with a thing like outreach. It's even harder when you don't speak enough of the language to where half of the time things are going on that you're completely unaware of. In the last week I seemed to get in this state of mind where I felt like I was a blind man being led, we were always in a constant state of motion and action, and I felt completely ineffective except to smile much, show grace, and to pray without ceasing. And I know by just being there I can open doors and be beneficial, but that's all hard for me. I have to keep going back in prayer, as if to say, Ok, God. I'm here. You told me to do it and now I did it. Now what? WHY am I here? What do I possibly have to offer? And what I keep having to come back to is that God seems to insist more on working in me than through me. and it's a humbling thing, to have to accept that it's me that I'm here for. It's ok. But I find myself at some point questioning everything, like the man in the fog in the valley. Thinking, "Can't I serve in a way that's more edifying to ME, God?" Questioning every single step, every single choice, every single action. When it comes down to it, in my heart I'm a doer, not in the sense that I merely want my hands to get dirty and the feeling that I'm doing good, but there's this need to know that what I do actually matters, that in the bigger scheme of things it makes things more better than worse. And with this, that's just tough cookies: That's not what this is. It's a process for me to make peace with that. I can buy a poor man a meal, but where will the next meal come from? I can plant a seed, but if I'm not there to pull the weeds as the plant grows, someone else must come along and tend to it. Trusting god with these matters is like exercise for the heart.
Much of what we've been doing here is evangelism. Evangelism is hard for me, not that I don't think it's important, but: with enough persistence you can make a kid mutter the sinner's prayer, and then announce from rooftops and on streetcorners and on the internet that you "accomplished something" (even though if something was indeed accomplished, it in reality you were a very small part of it). In modern Christendom we choose the wording "Last night such and such a person gave their life to the Lord." I keep wondering, "Can a thing like that even happen like that? In a few minutes, with a prayer that has the right words in it?" Our own phrasing suggests not. "Gave his life to the Lord." A decision like that can't be made in a moment, it is a continual decision. If we are to actually give our lives to the Lord, our money will be where our mouths are, and time is our currency. In the end I don't think god cares all that much about how much we give, he cares about our hearts. "This is love for God, to obey his commands." WIn my life, I can do my best to show everyone I come across how much I love God, but in order to show him, (or rather, for it all to be real and not just some farce for attention), I have to be obedient. It's easy for me to trust God with the big things, I've found, but for me the challenges are in the moments when I find myself wake up in the morning in some village in some place so far from everything that's normal for me, and it's 6:30 and the loudspeaker from the buddhist temple is announcing to the whole village who made acts of merit that day, that's when I make the choice to be obedient. a part of me wants to just lie in bed and feel sorry for myself about the cold shower and the mayonnaise sandwiches that await me for breakfast and the sickness and sore throat that I've been fighting for the past week, and to just trudge through it, like a chore. It's easy to give in to these thoughts; my life right now is a very inconvenient one. I miss my friends and my family. In an average day I've found myself eating things I wouldn't normally eat, doing things that aren't fun, living in a house where the ways have seemingly been built in order to not absorb any sound whatsoever (and someone seems to be ALWAYS plugging away at the same four chords of a guitar). And I find myself wanting, despite my love for everyone, to have a chance to just get away. and then there's this other voice in me that says "Take heart! I have overcome the world." And it's in this mindset that my life is a bit like a dream. I spend my days harvesting rice for old men, seeing the whole world from the back of a truck, talking to drunk men about God and about football, playing with children. My life is ridiculous, God. and I'm thankful to you for it. and it's then that I realize the whole trick to obedience: trust. If our God is as good as he says he is, we must not worry so much and we dare not think our plans are better, for our own sake. I can do it. I can take anything. entire dishes of raw meat, squatty potties with wet floors that leave my socks damp and gross, hours of hard work with no tangible reward. the continual uncertainty of everything, not knowing what's next or where any of this is heading, all the homesickness and loneliness. I can handle all of this and still wake up in the morning and be joyful, and expectant. That's the first part of the lesson. The second part is where I ask, OK, Lord, I can do ALL of this. But why? what good will ever come of it?
and the answer to this question is, "Wait and see. Press on in obedience."
It's weird letting people into your heart, knowing that in a few days you'll be gone, never to see or hear from them again in a lifetime. it makes one feel small. Our only power against such a feeling is to love fully in the time that we do have, and to live without regret.
I'm now in Ratchaburi, in the very east of the center of Thailand. It made yesterday a long, exhausting day, and by the end of it I was physically sick, with the sort of feeling one has where it feels as though they've swallowed a dirty rag. There are more things that I could write, but I feel most would be self-serving. when I tempt myself about writing about such things, I think of the story in the gospels where Jesus heals a blind man. After he heals him, he says something quite remarkable: Tell no one what just happened. It's remarkable. Yes, Jesus had some very practical logistical reasoning for wanting the man to stay silent, but what I keep coming back to is the fact that he healed him. and he didn't want anyone to know that he did it. as though to say, "this healing you've experienced, I did it for you. I did it because I want you to be well. I didn't do it to draw attention to myself, which is what everyone else does whenever they do good, my desire for you to be healed came from my love for you. nothing more. no ulterior motive." Later, when Jesus talks about the pharisees and teachers of the law, he says "Everything they do is done for men to see." but we are to be something different. "The greatest among you will be your servant. for he who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." In order for this verse to mean anything, we have to do something hard: we have to scrap everything that we've been taught is important, and in the place of all of our old ideas of success, we have to be able to say, to be obedient to God is the new success. The fools who subscribe to the american "prosperity gospel" will say, "Be obedient to God, and then you can feel good about all the stuff and honor and power you have." but Jesus seems to suggest the opposite: "Scrap everything. How nice your stuff is doesn't matter, it'll all turn to dust. Your reputation doesn't matter, as you'll be dead soon. Your power doesn't matter, soon it will be entrusted to someone else. All that you have that will last is your love. So love well."
As for the "but austin, we want to know what you're up to", I'll be spending the next two weeks in schools and in prison, making feeble attempts to love well. after that, I'll be in Bangkok for a week, making feeble attempts to love well, and then I'll be anywhere between here and Chennai doing I have no idea what until the end of february, hopefully making feeble attempts to love well. When I get back I'm going to spend a week in the woods with a bunch of college kids, making feeble attempts to love well, and then doing I have no idea what, making feeble attempts to love well and hopefully earning ten thousand dollars somehow. In september I'm moving to Sweden, as a feeble attempt to love well. These are my plans, Lord. I think they're yours too; if they aren't, cause them to fall apart. I'll write more about the sweden thing later. I started to mash out a paragraph about it and then I stopped, as I'd like to do it justice when I'm not mentally shot at the end of a long day. Blogging is a lot harder than just thinking about stuff. Also, it's fun to be vague and let you talk to me in person. I miss you very much, dear hypothetical reader, and I wonder how things are with you. Also, sorry about my mixed use of italics and parentheses in this post, I myself admit that it's annoying and I'll fix it and establish a predefined grammatical standard as soon as mashing out my thoughts to you becomes profitable.
Throwing some random pictures on here for fun. I could perhaps explain them, but I have like four minutes of internet time left at the cafe, so I'll hopefully get around to it at some point.
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