Better is One Day, than Thousands Elsewhere

Faithful Service

I just got back from Women’s Retreat with my church. It was a wonderful experience. I spent a lot of my time there on the hospitality team serving the beautiful women of my church copious amounts of food. It is amazing how much snack food 150 women can consume in 42 hours away from their kids and husbands.


I loved it! I loved tangibly doing something for others. I work in Foster care and Adoption so one would think that serving the fatherless for a living would be satisfying, while it has moments of reward it is hard to make a tangible difference in mounds of paperwork, e-mails, and phone calls.

On my way into work this morning I became discouraged to leave behind the community I had been living in this weekend, full of women loving the lord and one another. As I drove my strong desire to serve others for the Lord just wouldn’t go away.

In my previous Blog I talked about an organization called The World Race. I know it is not yet my time to serve in that organization, if ever. But I felt the desire so strongly this morning. Because it was on my mind I said a few prayers for Team Deep Roots that is now serving in The World Race in Malaysia. Their names are Chandler, Silas, Bethany, Sandy, Katie, and Mandi. Right now they are ministering to mentally chalanged and physically disabled people at Bethany Home in Simpang Empat, Malaysia. If you have a moment say a prayer for them.

I long for that kind of life, for my purpose to be to love on others and nothing else. I long to live a life where I don’t have to worry about paperwork deadlines, non-profit advertizing signs, minimum standards, identification lanyards, closing out files, recording used miles, office hours, conference powers, shredding piles, clothing aisles, checking e-mails, leaving voice mails, repetitively making copies, recording children’s hobbies, Background checks, and aching necks.

I love my Job I really do but I just feel like nothing I do makes a difference. And I want make a difference, I want to be significant in someone’s life in a real way and letting them know that all that I do comes from the Lord. It is hard to do that in my current setting even though I have no doubt that it is where God wants me.

I am reminded of the Parable in Luke 16. Most people use it to compare money and say that those who love money cannot also love God. While that has merit, and should be addressed, God used Luke 16:10-12 in a different way for me.

If I cannot serve others where I have been entrusted to serve them (in my Job) then why would God entrust me with other places to serve. For those who are faithful in little are also faithful in much. I must learn to be faithful with the little I have been given before I can be trusted to be faithful in the many desires of my heart.

Germination

Autumn has always been my favorite season. I love the colors and the cool winds, the leaves and pumpkins, football and Thanksgiving. Fall always feels like a transition like something big is around the corner; excited whispers of Christmas and stores beginning to fill their aisles with red and green. Fall clothes are the best too, wonderful warm colors and layering make everything fun!!!! It makes me want to curl up with a Pumpkin Pie Latte and watch Little Women.

I enjoy soaking up every ounce of this Season and find myself wishing it would never leave. I was talking with Amber the other day and she was telling me about her wonderful trip to Boston with her girls from the Dallas area. There is a picture of her soaking up fall, fun and friends on the freedom trail in Boston.

She was telling me how in Texas, West Texas to be more specific we only get a tiny taste of fall and our seasons seem to skip from summer straight to winter. She explained this with the trees and how here they turn from green to brown but in Boston they turn brilliant beautiful colors.

She told me she was going to write about how it affected her on her Blog “Waiting on Purpose.” So I won’t talk about how her beautiful analogy spoke to her. But I will tell you it got me thinking.

I had written a blog about a month ago “Promise through Powerful Prayer.” If you didn’t read it, it was about how God reassured that all the things I desire and have a passion for will come in their own time. Specifically I was talking about my love for other nations in physical need as well as need for a Savior. God more recently showed me an amazing organization called The World Race that goes all over the world fighting social injustice, providing help for the needy, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, loving the widow and the orphan, and all for the name of the Lord. I want to go so bad!!!!! I wish I was at a level of financial freedom to drop everything and serve the Lord through this organization in everything they do. But it is not yet my time.

So here I sit in my favorite season too excited for the big things just around the corner to enjoy the beauty of Autumn. God I pray that you help me to enjoy this season; for without Autumn the seeds of the crops cannot fall to the ground, lay dormant through the winter, to flourish and germinate in the spring ready for the bountiful Harvest you would have for their life.

Psalm 1:3-4
3 He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so,

but are like chaff that the wind drives away.