Sitting, waiting, wishing.

I've got no wack of pictures to post. Relax, I'm a busy guy. Now, while I've got you all believing that, I tell you about the party last night.

Yesterday was St. Patrick's day. And since there are at like 10 other volunteers from Ireland around, a St. Patrick's day party was inevitable. And when I say 10, I mean 4. It was at the girls' house on the other compound. I'm not sure why I'm bothering to say it was at the girls', since Chris and I are the only guys here; if it's not at our house, it's got to be at a girl's. We were outnumbered by about 20-2.

So yeah, there was a St. Patrick's Day party.

Cookies and sugar-high.
Pop and teeth-rot.
Karaoke and embarrassment.
Microphones and bleeding ears.
Green and more green.
Music and Riverdance.
Girls and chick songs.
Irish people and car explosions.
Cameras and blackmail.

Overall, a shamrocking good time.

Later, after we got kicked out, I went home to read a bit of this great book I've been lent. If you want to walk on water, you've got to get out of the boat by John Ortberg. I thought it was pretty fitting that he quotes a prayer by St. Patrick and I happen to read it on his day.

I arise today through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me.
Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise.
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity.

I found this prayer, and several things John Ortberg says in this book to have really hit home for me right now. Here I am in Africa - waiting, hoping, praying - that God will make it clear to me what He has planned for me. As the 3 months quickly come to an end and my attempts to add another 3 months onto it seem so difficult, I've felt myself growing impatient and helpless. And I don't LIKE that I feel impatient or helpless. I know I AM helpless without God. I know I need to trust Him and have faith that He's got a plan and will reveal it. Eventually.

It's times like this that I know Christianity isn't a human concept. Everything we make, we make as simple, easy and quick as possible. Fast-food wasn't fast enough, so now you don't even have to get out of your car. If Christianity was an invention by a group of people, it would be easy and getting easier. It would be simple. It would be quick. I haven't found it to be any of those things. We can't just sit in our cars (lives, jobs, careers, families...), drive up to the window every once and a while (church service, Bible study, prayer...) and expect a quick meal to fill us up. That 'meal', like fast-food, is often junk. If you eat it all the time, you'll get fat, lazy and unhealthy in faith. I hope my body never becomes unhealthy, but I pray my faith never does.

Some other things John Ortberg has said:

John Wesley wrote that Christians have just three rules to follow regarding material possessions:

Make all you can - save all you can - give all you can.

A friend of mine [John Ortberg's friend, not mine] wrote that apparently American [I think I can add Canadian, European...] evangelicals have decided that two out of three ain't bad.
You could make a secret, sacrificial gift this week - that's an eternal investment. Maybe it's your time and your talent.
You can drift: get up, go to work, come home, eat supper, watch TV, retire, and die.
Or, you can take each moment and say, "God, this is yours." You can offer him your spiritual giftedness - not compared with anyone else - as fully honed and developed as you can get it, identified with pristine clarity, cultivated with relentless perseverance, deployed with unstoppable vigor, submitted with sacrificial humility, and celebrated with raucous.

This is what I want to do. This is what I pray to do. I want to offer myself to God to do whatever he wants with me. So why the delay? Why do I still have unanswered questions??
I think it's because I'm not ready.

A couple chapters later:

Why does God make us wait? If he can do anything, why doesn't he bring us relief and help and answers now?
At least in part, to paraphrase Ben Patterson, what God does in us while we wait is as important as what we're waiting for.

and then a couple pages later:

Waiting in the Lord is a confident, disciplined, expectant, active, and sometimes painful clinging to God.
Waiting on the Lord is the continual, daily decision to say, "I will trust you, and I will obey you. Even though the circumstances of my life are not turning out the way I want them to, and may never turn out the way I would choose, I am betting everything I have on you. I have no plan B."

God's plan is far better than mine. I know this. I just need to believe it.

Now I'm going to ask you to do something. Something a bit unusual for in a blog. Even more unusual for me to ask.

As I try to find my purpose, as I come to terms with the fact that God's plan is FAR better than anything I can think of, as I try to be patient for His plan to come, as I try to work out staying another 3 months, as I try to figure out how I can best do whatever I'm faced with, as I try to face whatever is put in before me, as I'm going though this spiritual and emotional struggle... As all this is going on - I ask that you pray for these things for me.