Adjustment

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. My wife and I just got back from a week long mission trip to the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. We were a part of 350 students and adults from all over our state, who participated in a massive "Volunteers in Mission" workcamp. We worked for and with people in need, while experiencing immersion in a culture different than our own. Teams worked on houses of the poor and elderly, refurbished church buildings, led Vacation Bible Schools, canvassed neighborhoods, and generally joined in whatever was needed by our Cherokee brothers and sisters and their communities.

In addition to the opportunity to serve, I realized that all of us has the opportunity to experience something essential to following Jesus - we had the chance to adjust. Henry Blackaby teaches us that God's invitation to a relationship and God's invitation to join in what God is doing leads to a crisis in faith for us that demands adjustment. Relatively comfortable and privileged church people had to adjust this week in eastern Oklahoma. We had to adjust to crowded conditions; sleeping in school classrooms, twenty persons and more to a room. We had to adjust from video games and television in airconditioned comfort, to sweaty and dirty work in the hot July sun. We had to adjust from agendas we control to work requirements and service that surprised us every day. We adjusted from privacy to mass use of restrooms. We had to adjust from food on demand to military style meals, serving the same thing to everyone, like it or not. We were required to adjust from a faith that serves our personal needs, to a faith that gives up our needs for the needs of others.

It was dirty, grimy, demanding, draining, sometimes out of control, and relentless. And it was the Body of Christ being the Body of Christ. We need to do more adjusting, rather than expecting everything to bend to us. After all, Jesus made the ultimate adjustment of giving up His place in glory, to become human, and to take the form of a slave; obedient even to death on a cross.

I'm going to rest for a bit, but not long. You head on down the river. I'll see you soon.