A Dirty Cup

I had the joy of having a date night with Matt the other night. We were able to drop the kids off with his boss and enjoy an evening out. It was a rare and precious thing for us. After dinner, we went to have coffee at a local coffee shop. While there I noticed a plastic cup. There was nothing special looking about the cup, but my eyes grew wide and I immediately had to grab my camera and take a picture of it. Matt didn't understand what the big deal was until after I had texted my mother about it and he saw the conversation that took place between us.

This cup looks exactly like a series of cups my Grandmother used to own. My mother and I reminisced about how we used to dye our Easter eggs in them and use them as the water cups for cleaning our paint brushes. She still has one in her craft room for that exact purpose.

It was just a little cup but it had so much emotional sway over me. If my mother's house was burning down, that cup would be one of the main things I'd want to save.

We are God's "dirty cup". We are not special in it of ourselves. In fact, most of God's most precious children are those that others would see as worthless. It is not usually the World Leaders, the rich and the powerful that God cherishes.. It's the "dirty cups".

It is how God cherishes us and uses us that makes us so special and precious to Him. Don' worry about how much others value you. Your worth is found in Christ. He ensures that we are saved from the fire, not others.

Having the right perspective

    "The living God is a God of missions." This is what kicked off this years round of Perspectives on The World Christian Movement. A great 15 week class that bursts open people's hearts with how awesome God is and how his end goal is to be glorified by all nations, people and tongues. While it's main focus is not to tell everyone how they need to get out there and jump into missions in the 10/40 window (the space on our globe that have the least reached people groups), be warned, by taking the class that very well might happen.... Maybe not the 10/40 window exactly but your desire to get up and do something, to act, to be part of God's missional plan. I took this course, officially, about 8 years ago, very pregnant with our youngest at the time. I had been kicking around the idea of short term missions and wanted to really know what was going on out there. I wanted to understand if it was something I could even do. Don't get me wrong, God made all of us to be "on mission" for him, but I have always struggled with being a bit dubious on just how "on mission" he made me. I'm sassy, loud and independent, and I don't enjoy passing out tracts, "cold calling" people with the gospel or just starting up gospel oriented conversations with total strangers.... so, clearly, if God was going to use me for global work, it was going to be short term... Where I could go and meet a few physical needs, get uncomfortable enough with how good I have it compared to the rest of the world, and then come home and get cozy again for a while.
    By the end of the that initial Perspectives class I was pumped. Short term, here we go. World travel, make a difference, plant seeds all over the place.. I'm going to do my little tiny part. Matt, on the other hand, went "Life time, here we go!" To be fair, he was already kind of there. He purposefully picked his career in plumbing so that he could be of use anywhere and, if need be, be a tent maker type missionary. Needless to say, while God was working in our hearts, it was at different levels and at different speeds. Funny how he does that. I went off on a few short term trips to Canada and enjoyed my experiences for the most part (there may have been some "cold call" style conversations involved, not my thing.) but I appeared to have stalled. I know I've told the rest of the story since then, so I'm not going to go through it all over again. We'll skip to the good stuff.
    Here I am today, working at going on a short term trip to Port Shepstone South Africa... and not so I can "do some good" and then come home and get comfy again, but with the outlook that this could be life long. I know I said at first that I was hesitant about the calling, especially since the temptation of just being with our friends is very real but I can much more confidently say now that this is no longer the case. The more time I have to think on this sudden shift the more I realize that I am no longer satisfied with this comfy life. I'm no longer content to build a name for myself, instead, I'd much rather build a name for the only one who deserves it..  My God! As we reach out to various mission organizations and seek out Godly counsel and training, I am open and ready to the possibility of working somewhere other than my first "choice". Don't get me wrong, I want to be with the Genesis team, I still want to be in South Africa and helping in the computer room... but I'm no longer closed off to the idea of going elsewhere... And I would still want to go check out Genesis even if Sam and Anna said they would be leaving eventually. My heart feels refreshed and rejuvenated. It's a good place to be in.

Inexpressible Joy

"Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory."- 1st Peter 1:8

    My heart is overflowing with this passage today. Sometimes we can feel so distant from God. Unlike the apostles/disciples, we never got to see our Lord's face. I didn't hear his words with my own ears or wash his feet with my own tears and yet... I love him. He never physically met me at a well and said "Go and sin no more" and yet I believe in him and I believe in his saving grace. It truly is an inexpressible joy.

    South Africa has me feeling this way too. I keep looking into what life will be like down there, who the people are, and the challenges we'll face. Yet, despite my late night ponderings of "you're crazy, Amber." I'm in love with these people. I haven't met many of them but I love them and what makes it more exciting is to hear that the feeling appears to be mutual. I keep getting trickles of information fed to me about how others there are excited at the prospect of us coming and staying. Meeting after meeting is being set up and arranged, whether that be with our own church or with others that are interested in helping us get there. To feel Christ's love poured out on us by his people... by my Godly family is too beautiful for words.