Be Thirsty No More

Today has been a long day. It's been nothing out of the ordinary, it's just felt very long...sometimes I swear more hours are added to certain days. Tonight the kids have chosen to use their usual amount of never ending energy and exert it in mainly negative ways instead of positive ones. Screaming, hitting, crying, slamming doors...the whole spill. On a positive note last night Ricky, the oldest boy, chose to sit in the living room with Alison and I after the younger kids were in bed and sit and talk with us as we looked through pictures. I felt like his usual air of pride, typical teenage brattiness and disrespect had been stripped away, at least for that brief moment, and I got time to bond with the real Ricky for the first time since our arrival in March. I don't expect to experience it very often with him but I was thankful for it...

Yet again, sorry to disappoint but I'm putting off finishing my blog on living missionally. I feel a lot of pressure the more I put it off...I promise I will do it one day...I need to re-gather my thoughts so I can best articulate them. The past week or so my sleep habits have been very interrupted. Between incessant itching from bug bites and my mind that won't shut up I feel like the hope for a peaceful, restful nights sleep is beginning to get hopeless. The other day at the beach I borrowed Alison's IPOD and played Robbie Seay's Beautiful Scandalous Night and I felt overwhelmed with God's presence as I listened to that song and stared out into the vast ocean that I'm fortunate enough to have located in my front yard. I've listened to it about twenty times since. There's something about those lyrics that I can't get out of my mind. The song starts off...

"Go on up to the mountain of mercy
To the crimson perpetual tide
Kneel down on the shore
Be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified
Follow Christ to the holy mountain
Sinner sorry and wrecked by the fall
Cleanse your heart and your soul
In the fountain that flows
For you and for me and for all"...

I just thinks those lyrics are full of so much beautiful, freeing truth. As you all know I teach three of the kids here at the orphanage. The most frustrating thing about teaching the kids is the lack of motivation to do most things here, but it feels especially, to learn. They just don't see a reason. I think some of them have it in their heads that they are never going to amount to anything and don't see a reason to try. It's such a fatalistic mindset to live with and such a debilitating one. How many of us to live with this mindset? Perhaps for us it's not that we feel we'll never amount to anything and as a result lack wanting to learn, but we feel like whatever thing it is will always be there and so we must live with it. For the kids it's that they will never get anywhere so they settle for that, content in that and never feel the motivation to try for anything better and live their lives this way. Clearly you can live your life this way but how fully are you living life with this mindset? Of course that is an opinion based question, however as a Christian I think we are called to be living life to the fullest. I have full faith that our Father wants the best for us in every aspect of our lives. He doesn't call us to live simple, easy lives but he wants us to live freely in him. C.S. Lewis remarks that, "that the only fatal thing to do is sit down content with anything less than perfection." Don't be mistaken..I'm not claiming God asserts that we are going to ever reach perfection but I do firmly believe it is through Christ we are freed and whatever stands there in our way holding us back from doing so he wants to free us from. "Kneel down on the shore, be thirsty no more, go under and be purified.."

peace & love,
naseem