One of my favorite moments while in the DR was on the Sunday after our mid-missions trip team meeting. I'm not sure how it started (because wasn't like someone said, "Hey, let's have a worship session!"), but Ben started playing guitar, and we ended up worshiping for an hour and a half. Jesus said that a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks, and that was the closest I have ever come to that kind of worship. It was absolutely amazing, because each and every one of us was engaging with God in a way I'm fairly certain each of us had never experienced so deeply before. Nothing was keeping us from praising and pouring our hearts out. All eyes were focused on God and God alone... none of us cared what we looked like or what other people might think about our singing, dancing, hand-waving, or kneeling, because that wasn't the point. By the end we had come into this sacred space that we didn't want to leave, which unfortunately we had to, but I think it brought us to our knees in a way that made our gaze on Jesus even more fixed and unwavering, and re-set our tone and our hearts for the trip.
It was in that hour and a half that I knew precisely where I was and precisely who I was. I had knelt in the presence of an Almighty God, who also happened to be the lover of my soul, as a worshiper, as a beloved child of God. And that was my identity: simply God's beloved child. It had absolutely nothing to do with how I felt at that moment, or what I looked like, or what my ethnicity was, or what my major was in college, or who my family expected me to be, or what my gifts and flaws were, or what I ate for lunch that afternoon. It had only to with God and His character, God and His compassion, His nature to be slow to anger and abounding in love. It had only to do with the fact that God loves me. It is as simple as that. And that... that is my identity in Christ.
Coming back to the US, and being home, has been fairly difficult, to say the least. It has been a struggle because the chains of other identities have been stifling me. The only question I hear these days is, "Now that you've graduated, what are you going to do?" I can't answer that question with any degree of sufficiency. I have the image of me running, sprinting now, but the only lights are at my feet. I cannot see the path in front of me, or the end point of where I am running toward. I think God has been trying to show me that this is sufficient for me, that I need to trust Him in directing my footsteps, that I don't need to see the end of the tunnel to know that God is leading my path. That has been pretty difficult to explain to people, especially those who aren't Christians, whose facial expressions or verbal responses denote something like, "Aren't you getting too much into your faith?"
Despite the voices of others, despite the expectations there are of me that are imposed by others, God has been affirming that I need to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus and that I need to keep surrendering the things I'm holding on to, and trusting. The other day I came across Psalm 119:105:
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.
And so, I shall keep sprinting. I know not what the goal is, whether it is a job, or a series of jobs that lead up to something else, or something else, but one thing is for certain: at the end, there is a green pasture with still waters, and Jesus is there, waiting for me.
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