I have lately, maybe more than any other time in my life, felt like I am on a journey. I feel like this magnificent journey started almost a year ago when I took a trip to North Carolina to visit friends and entered once again into the office of a dear friend, Lyston Peebles. He is one of the many people that God put into my life to ensure that I ended up in Ethiopia three years ago in 2007. Once again I found myself in Lyston’s office where he encouraged me to consider moving to Ethiopia for two years and 7 months later I was on a plane with my life packed in 4 suitcases, destined for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia once more. I didn’t really know all that my time here would hold, I just knew that I felt like I was being faithful to a call that God has placed deeply on my heart and that I had to respond by saying yes to Him.
When I tucked into bed my first night back at the Cherokee House this past July, I looked to the side of my bed and there was a simple colored paper illustration of a sunrise coming over the mountains with the verse written, “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage” Psalm 84:5. As strange as this sounds, right above the drawing as an “r” that had been carved into the shelf where the drawing was hanging. Something told me that God was saying, “Rachael, this is my verse for you, cling to this.” I’m not sure who the artist of this little picture was, probably one of the dozens of Cherokee volunteers that come through the house each year. Even on that first night, I felt the significance of that little drawing, and five months later, the meaning of it has just increased.
This verse was so striking to me because I felt like I just started out on a pretty significant journey moving to Ethiopia, one that was definitely not comfortable and on my first night at the house, it really hit that this was going to be the reality of my life for the next two years, at least according to my plan. I started reflecting more on this verse my first morning that I woke up in the house and wrote in my journal, “My strength can’t be in myself—I do not have enough of it by far. But O God may my hope and strength be in you—help me to set my heart on the pilgrimage that lays ahead.” –July 15th, 2010. I thought about the fact the verse promises that we will be blessed if we don’t rely on our own strength but rather on the Lord’s. Also, I considered the image of a pilgrimage-a journey usually to something sacred and holy to pay reverence. It dawned on me that God was asking me to commit to the upcoming journey, the pilgrimage, towards what I did not know but definitely towards knowing Him more deeply and fully. The journey and the twists and turns of starting life in Ethiopia definitely seemed unclear and unknown and yet there was something about knowing I was in the middle of God’s will that comforted me that the I was on the road, which was exactly where I was supposed to be.
As these last five months have unfolded, I have sensed an incredible feeling that I am being led on this road. There have been some big ways that God has interjected that I have seen his hand strongly at work, and there have been other ways that have been more like quiet whispers that say, “this is the way, walk in it.” A quote from Paul Tournier describes the season of my life much more eloquently than I could. He writes, “He leads us step by step, from event to event. Only afterwards, as we look back over the way we have come and reconsider certain important moments in our lives in the light of all that has followed them, or when we survey the whole progress of our lives, do we experience the feeling of having been led without knowing it, the feeling that God has mysteriously guided us.”
This morning, the other girls and I didn’t feel like we could muster up the strength to put on church clothes, get on public transportation and make our way to church. Instead, we decided to stay home and listen to a sermon from Austin Stone Community Church. The sermon was entitled “Sabbath: Learning To Trust.” The main message was that God commanded us to rest on the Sabbath in order to train our hearts and remind us that all good things that happen in our lives are a result of our strivings and our own strength, but instead, that Sabbath teaches out hearts to remember that God is the one working and that it is his mighty outstretched hand that is in control of our lives. Sabbath shakes us from the illusion that if we accomplish our checklists and errands, that the week ahead will be successful. After the sermon, we all started talking about how it is so clear that God has brought the eight of us together on this wonderful journey. We are from California, Texas, Montana, North Carolina, and Indiana. We are all very different and yet we are living life together in Ethiopia, striving towards Christ-like community with one another and serving others. We realized that we are all in a place of waiting-some waiting to hear about what college to attend, some waiting to hear about what jobs they will find when they get home, but all of us waiting.
In these times of waiting on the next step in the journey, it is comforting to know that we are on the pilgrimage God has set out for us, and that is a place that is better to be than anywhere else in the world. I would not trade this rainy morning in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for any other place in the world today. The journey over the past 5 months has not always been easy–there have been times of frustration, of pain, and sorrow. There have been times where we have felt the incredible brokenness of the effects of poverty, of orphans not having anyone in the world to show them love, a child on the verge of death because there is no doctor to perform a surgery that is routine in the US, sadness from being away from family, missing comforts of the States. Yet all of the hard times have been equally weighed with times of incredible joy and the most overwhelming feeling that I am exactly where I am meant to be..when we are hugging the same children, sitting around the table at night and hearing incredible stories about each others’ days, eating lunch in an Ethiopia’s one room house and feeling the best sense of hospitality you have experienced in years…the list goes on. The highs and lows are all apart of this journey. I am resolved that I never want to end this pilgrimage. I never want to go on my own way, try to manipulate circumstances to bring my own plans to fruition because this way is such much sweeter, so much more fulfilling, so much more rich—like this is what life is meant to be like.
I am thankful beyond words to the unknown artist who left behind the sweet reminder for me that “blessed are those who strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.”
Wow Rach!
This posting is incredible! It hits my heart so deeply. In the midst of my busyness and chaotic life and job, I have not taken the time to reflect …. reflect about what God is teaching me here in England … to the extent that it makes sense anyways.
It is interesting how our hearts are always yearning for “what’s next” and rarely do we process what is here and now. Don’t get me wrong, we were definitely made for something more – to live in full communion with our creator – so yearning for the next bigger better thing – heaven – is not bad. But, I think that we are being taught something incredible while we wait for the day we meet Jesus face to face.
Your blogs are always encouraging to me my sweet friend, Rachael!
I love you!
Rachel, I’ve read this lovely post twice in two days. Your heart is so gracefully expressed, I hear the longing for all god has for you on this incredible journey. I will be praying his blessing on you regarding all of this from this day forward. Bless you more than I can express!
In him,
Buddy