Showing up for the day is always worth it, every time! Whether the day turns out to be percieved as good or bad by us, there is always so much value in the showing up.
Adventures in Missions is really intentional about giving us rest. A blessing! It would be difficult to sustain a years worth of missions work without rest, and more than that, God designed us to infuse rest into our daily and weekly rhythms.
So every week we have 5 days of ministry, one day for Sabbath, and one day for what we call “adventure day.” All the days are needed and sweet in and of themselves. I’ve told you all a bit about what ministry has looked like this month, and soon I hope to share with you the blessing of Sabbath, but today we’re talking about adventure day!
It’s a day we get to do what we choose, and ideally we get to spend the day marveling at creation in whatever country we are in. This month our adventure day falls on Mondays!
We’ve gotten to go on quite a few adventures this month already, this Monday I found myself leaving our house at 7am to go on a hike to somewhere that I wasn’t sure of the destination, I just said yes to go. We ended up going with 3 sweet sweet women from Horizon Church that took us up a trail right next to their house.
I hadn’t asked any questions before we hopped in the taxi to their house, I just went lol! It turns out the mountain we were hiking would take us up to the highest point in Jaco! Heck yeah! The hike was hard, like really, unexpectantly hard, and also so so fun. While not crazy long, we all agreed this was one of the hardest hikes we’ve ever done, and most of us that went on the hike are pretty “hikey” people.
The hill was so steep we were basically trying not to slide down while hiking up. I’m pretty sure I sweated out all the water I’ve ever put in my body over the course of my life. It was like I was drinking water from my water bottle and it was immediately pouring back out through my skin LOL.
When we finally got to the top and saw the beautiful birds-eye view of Jaco it was definitely worth it! It sounds cliche, but it felt like a small picture of our lives. When you’re in the roots of it, sweating through the trees, its hard to have an accurate perspective of what God is really doing in your life. Each time I took a step, it was hard to reconcile in my mind that that one difficult step was going to somehow get me to the top.
I’m not sure if the analogy is complete in our everyday lives. I don’t think there is one mountain top that we are striving towards necessarily. What I do know is that if you walk with God long enough, He will time and time again give you a view of your life that gives you a clearer picture of where His hand has been over all of it!
Getting up the mountain was a struggle, each step felt hard. When I got to the top, God showed me a gorgeous view of Jaco. There are hard things going on in Jaco, but in the larger story, that is how God sees Jaco, beautiful. The same thing goes for our lives. From close up, sometimes we can struggle to see how God sees us. Regardless of what our lives look like from close up, God sees us as a beautiful view every second of the day. I’m reminded of this verse that one of our squad leaders actually has tattooed on her neck; “You are altogether beautiful my darling; there is no flaw in you.” -Song of Songs 4:7
That verse is a picture of how God feels about you individually.
God, thank you for seeking us while we seek adventure. Thank you for showing yourself to me in the places I look for you, and the places I don’t. You are in every place, every day, all the time, always. Amen!
