I spent the past few days visiting people in the Coachella Valley; the Desert grounds where I lived and grew up in for the majority of my life. I encountered so much strife while there:
-A high school teenager and college age student who have a dad with cancer that is spreading throughout his body.
-A family who sold almost all their possessions with a willingness to serve God in a foreign country, but after selling everything with only a month left in the states the Lord has led them to stay.
-A young wife with two children is at home by herself because her husband was taken to prison as a suspect of his mother’s death.
-A widow remarried to a godly man who happens to like riding Harleys and she is in the hospital recovering from a motorcycle accident with a shattered ankle.
-After being away from some of my friends there for a while, then to get together and drinking be one of the first things they go on and on about has helped me to realize the obsession people have with alcohol out there, and drugs too.
-Cohabiting couples
-Broken families
-Single mothers
-Custody battles
All of these situations are enough to make people leave and run away. However, there is a part of me that feels like that is where I should be, involved in the lives of these hurting people. But, moving back there would require me to leave a home that is rent free, studying Interior Design, the many like-minded single friends God has blessed me with, and the older wiser mentors God has provided me. There is always keeping in touch, but that is never the same as living with the people. Maybe I will have to leave those things and move back there. Or, maybe this is a further time of preparation where Iron will continue to sharpen Iron, where I will continue to learn about Interior Design to provide a job for me out there, where I can continue to glean wisdom from the wise, so that God will use that to make me more wise, and also be faithful to share truth with those whose life seems comfortable (Some of the hardest people to share truth with). God is in control of my heart and is conforming my heart’s desire with His. Only so much planning can be done, because I am learning that he can change circumstances and my heart’s desire in an instant to refine it to His, which may be different than what I initially thought.
In the mean time, by His strength only, I desire to continue making the most of my time and with the people that are in my life here in Santa Clarita; be faithful and an example to them. Who are those people? The family I Nanny for, the families at the Canyons Aquatic Swim Club, the Senior Center, Antioch Coffeehouse, the women in my Interior Design classes, with my mentors, and with my sweet friendships with people that share the same passions! Not every season will include people with huge tragedies going on in their lives, but what a time to serve and remind myself and others of our need for Christ. When things are easy and comfortable seems to be when it is most dangerous spiritually. Mabe these people that God has placed in my life here in Santa Clarita are experiencing difficult things, and I have yet to learn about them. Come to think of it, life without Christ is pretty hopeless and empty... a tragedy.
Life absent of Christ is like a Mirage; once a person thinks they have found something satisfying outside of Christ, it disappears and they have nothing. Lord, use us to help others that are blind; those who keep going after empty things, see the truth!
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