I’ve been doing some cleaning lately. The sort through things & throw them away kind of cleaning. I found a Peace Corps ad that I tore out of an issue of Time Magazine sometime during college. I put it up on the wall by my desk every year. I can still picture it hanging. I kept that ad and found it the other day. It depicts a thatch roof hut type dwelling somewhere in a desert mountain region. And it reads:
Would you stop to give someone directions?
If you were walking that way,
would you guide them?
What if it was out of your way?
One mile.
Two miles.
Two thousand miles,
directly inland from the Skeleton Coast,
to a one-room schoolhouse in the foothills of Namibia.
What if you were the teacher in that schoolhouse?
Would you travel that far to teach someone?
To learn something yourself?
Peace Corps.
Life is calling. How far will you go?
Something about that ad struck me then and sticks with me now. I think it’s the challenge it poses: “How far will you go?”
I know for me, that’s a question I have to push myself on everyday. I am by nature not a risk taker. I am a play it safe rule follower type of person. But, when it comes to God’s calling on my life, I need to learn to go farther, to leap out of my comfort zone, not just dip my foot in the water on the other side.
I don’t know what exactly that means right now for me, but I know it’s a challenge I’m renewing for myself – go farther.
When Nate and I started GI, my approach was similar…strategize, have a plan, wait for the opportune moment and then go! That way there's less mistakes.
Nates approach was "go now and figure it out along the way. And don't be afraid to make mistakes."
I wrestled with that a lot. Still do to this day.
But it's the single most impacting shift in thinking I've adapted to and it's made all the difference in the world how I approach life/work/calling.
Sometimes making yourself completely available means just jumping into the deep end. He may not promise to catch you, but He will not let you drown. This is the way He teaches us to trust Him and learn how to swim.