Mind? Consider yourself BLOWN

I went to my cousins' lakehouse for the holiday this weekend. My uncle and cousin are both avid pyromaniacs, so they had us all go down to the dock while they shot off fireworks from the beach. There were about twenty of us, all watching the colors explode into the sky. But there was that lapse of time while Jim and Parker were setting up fireworks and when they were exploding. I took that time to look at the stars.

What I realized was that I'd be seeing those same stars from another continent in a few days. Heading to Kenya for a 17-day mission trip, I was blown away by the fact that the stars are the same everywhere in the world...you just see them from different positions. They're the same; you're different.

Like God. He's always the same. You're just different. I don't see God the same way I saw Him when I was eight years old, twelve years old, fifteen years old. It's like I've just been moving positions around the world, seeing Him in a different way every time. And that's not necessarily bad. They're just different perspectives.

The fact that I'll be in a foreign country for 15ish days (2 for travel time) where I don't know the language, will totally stick out, and have zero idea as to how things are actually going to work out scares the heck out of me. I like order and structure. I like for things to be planned out. Improvisation? Yeah right. But God, through me going to Kenya, is going to force me to change my ways. An inciting incident. No one wants to change. Everyone has to. All the fear I've got about being in a country so far from home, about not knowing if I'm going to actually be able to eat enough, about sharing my faith with people I probably won't ever see again is being used by God to show me that I can do it. The Bible says "do not fear" or some variation of it 365 times. That's the same number of days in the year. Meaning I shouldn't ever be afraid of anything

Because God saved Isaac. God saved Noah. God saved Moses. God saved me. The same God who reigned thousands of years ago is still around today. Like the same stars that are still out in space are thousands of years old.

But even stars will explode into nothingness or become black holes. God won't.

That's why I'm going to Kenya. Because I need to tell people that God is the same God who has been around since the beginning of time...and even before then. And He loves us. A lot. Regardless of the crap we make Him put up with. He's perfect. We're not. He's our star in the sky--a hopeful light in the middle of blackness.

Kenya, here we come.