Traveling dreams...

Do you ever just think it would be awesome to officially have a bohemian (wanderer?  adventurer?  vagabond?  sign me up) lifestyle and just travel hither and yon?  Honestly, that's basically what I do already (I mean, I DO travel kind of a lot, let's be honest), but sometimes I see signs like this and think, "Shanghai?  I've never been there!  I must go!"

Which only reminds me, of course, that there are places I could be going to help people instead of for my own enjoyment.  And people at home who need help.  And all kinds of things I could be doing in between that wouldn't cost so much money.

Now I know!

I may have mentioned this before (at least once) but I've long wondered what the Lord's will is for me slash my life. I know that He has a will for me (and I tend to make everyone else aware of that), but it's hard to pin something down in concrete. "I will be a missionary when I grow up." That's something most of us aren't comfortable just out-and-out saying. We're more apt to say, "Well, I've praying about it, and I really think the Lord is leading me into His work. I'm tentatively scheduled to go to Zimbabwe this summer." Mind you, I like that second sentence better. It leaves a lot more room for the Lord's will to actually be accomplished in whatever capacity He chooses.

But there is something that I know for certain is the Lord's will for me. I know of a specific thing that He wants me to do (well, more than one, but let's just dwell on this one, because it's worded awesomely).

"In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." I Thess. 5:18.

It's that easy. If we (code word: me--I don't see to many other people over thinking this) stopped and were truly thankful for everything then we would be certain to be inside of the will of the Lord.

Just a tiny part of His plan for my life, but I'm only human, so I only understand small amounts of things at a time.

What wilt Thou have me to do?

For years, I've struggled with the concept of "What wilt Thou have me to do?" Basically, I understand the question, but how do we really know what the Lord is telling us in reply? I think it's just my stubbornness that has made me ponder it so much (want to talk about consecration? I am the wrong person to talk to that about, stubborn ol' me...), but it just seems... difficult.

One thing that always sort of got to me was about the whole when-I-grow-up-I'll-be-a-whatever question. For school, at the end of every year, my mom would have us write what we wanted to be when we grew up. For the first few school years of my life the answer was, without fail, "a missionary or a nurse," but once I was in about third grade, I realized that I didn't really want to be a missionary or a nurse. I wanted to be a "wife and mommy." By the time I got to twelfth grade I made it all sophisticated and wrote "homemaker" but the idea was essentially the same.

Which is all good and well, but that's the sort of thing that the Lord has to determine for you, at an appointed time (also good and well, don't get me wrong). So I've spent the last few years sort of floating around, doing random jobs and enjoying myself thoroughly. Also fine. But there was one thing that always sort of got to me--what was I really doing with my life?

Well, I still have no idea what the answer to that question is, but this isn't so much about what I'm doing with my life as what I'm letting the Lord do with my life.

Last Wednesday there were a lot of remarkably helpful comments made, one of which sort of eased my mind about what I was doing with myself these days. They were reading from Ephesians 2:10 "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."

They were pointing out that every work we do is specialized and prepared, and God has a very specific path He wants each one of us to travel. Basic stuff, true. But then someone made the remark to the effect of, "You know, kids today try to decide what to do based on what they're good at, which doesn't make a bit of sense, because they're really supposed to be doing whatever God wants them to do, not what they want to do."

As an aside, anybody who knows anybody in my meeting can guess who this might have been (one hint, it wasn't my dad).

Anyhow, there was more to it than that, but it was a good thought for me, one I needed to be reminded of. I'm in insurance right now, which is weird, and certainly not something I would have chosen of my own accord. But that's OK, because for some odd reason, this is where the Lord has me. I was enjoying the verse from Ecclesiastes 9 about, "whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." For some reason, my hand has found insurance, and I need to make sure that I do it to the best of my ability so that I might honour the Lord.

Which is scary to me, honestly. Because it means that I've got to work extremely hard to make up for what I lack in common insurance sense. But... I can do all things through Christ Who gives me strength!