Time

I might have said this before, but time here is a strange thing. Time here is different than time in America. In America, the days generally go by pretty quickly but then the weeks and months drag on. Here it's the opposite. The days here are so long (part of this may be due to the ridiculously high temperatures) but the weeks and months fly by. It's March already people! How is that possible? I feel like I only just got back to Jinja but in reality it's been almost 2 months.

Sunset on Lake Victoria 

There is so much work that needs to get done here in this place that it is easy to get overwhelmed. It's easy to look around at all of the people, lost and hurting, knowing that you will never get to help all of them, and question why you are here. It is easy to throw yourself so fully into your work that you forget the main reason why you are here in the first place. It's easy to make that work an idol above God. And that, my friends, is simply the devil trying to take something that is good and of God and turn it against us and our God.

Storm front 

I've always been one to fully throw myself into something that I care about. To work hard and not stop working until I finish whatever has to be done. In the past, I admit to often putting that work before God. As my walk with Him has increased, however, I've come to a point where I recognize that I can only do anything because God has blessed me with the ability to do it. That it is because of Him that I can do the work that is set before me. We each have been given a beautiful set of abilities and gifts from God and it is up to us to use them to their greatest potential.

The rain started across the Lake

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms. -1 Peter 4:10

It's so easy in today's society to compare yourself to everyone else. This is also the devil playing with our lives. What does comparison get us? It gets us to a place where we despise our lives, the gifts that we have been given, and instead desire and long for what everyone else has. It gets us to a place where we are unhappy, envious, and simply ungrateful. A quick example from my life: So many people that I went to school with are getting engaged, married, and starting to have babies. It's easy to fall into desiring that, to be in love with someone whom I want to get married to. However, I'm not there. And in all honesty, I know I probably won't be there for a while. Right now, God has called me to a time of singleness, of having an intimate relationship with Him. And when that first happened, it was really hard on me. But God is good and he is faithful and he only wants what is best for us. And now I am truly enjoying basking in His love for me.

And then it poured

So as I throw myself into the work that needs to be done here, I make sure that I am in the Word. I start my mornings off in the Word and I finish my days in the Word. I love being in a place where I am desiring to have this intimacy with my Lord. I love recognizing that I can only do this work because the Lord has blessed me with the ability to do it. I love knowing that he has given me everything that I need to do the work He has called me to. And when I feel inadequate, unable to do whatever is before me, He will work through me in a way that I could never imagine or He will provide someone else who will fill where I am lacking.

My prayer for anyone reading this is that you would look at the abilities and gifts that God has given you and cultivate them to the best of your ability. That you would stop chasing after what other people have been given and would embrace what you have been blessed with instead. As you begin doing this, you will see God moving in powerful ways.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. -Colossians 3:23-24

God bless you.