Tasks

It's so easy to be distracted by the tasks of life, the every day jazz.
It's much easier to focus on the inane than the truly important...but what a waste!
I can walk through my day completing one task after another and never accomplish anything of eternal significance.
What a waste...



I don't want to waste my life; I mean, I do want to waste my life in the world's eyes, but not in God's. I want the things I spend my time on to 'echo in eternity' so to speak. I want them to have an impact greater than the immediate, and definitely greater than a check mark on my list. However satisfying it is to watch my progress down a list of to-do's, the value of forfeiting progress for depth of impact outweighs it.



For example, my most recent daunting task has been to create files of paperwork for the next group of interns so that we can begin filling out their visa applications. So a few days ago I made the trip into town to make a bunch of copies and buy folders and such, and on the way I met a friend. Well, actually I made a friend...apparently she knew me but I can't remember her for the life of me! haha! She was walking the opposite direction and stopped me to ask where I was going and if she could join me.



It was a little strange at first, mostly because I wasn't sure if she had an ulterior motive behind hanging out with me, but eventually we started talking and I was more comfortable. Basically she's a student at a technical college in the area and wasn't sure what to do with her afternoon, until she saw me walking and decided to accompany me wherever I was going! Of course my American trained mind immediately started contriving excuses to let her off the hook of walking all the way to town with me just to watch me do errands and possibly slow me down, but then the Holy Spirit smacked me in the face and I snapped out of it. How often do young women walk up to me and just want to hang out and talk for a few hours? (In case you're not sure, the answer is almost never.)



So we spent the morning together walking from one place in town to the next and I got to hear part of her story. Her mother is from a local tribe and her father is from the coast, and she is the only believer in her family. The rest are Muslims. When she was 18 years old, she became extremely sick and a local pastor came to pray for her. She was healed in the name of Jesus and she has followed him since then! She said it has been lonely and difficult, which I'm sure are understatements. I let her know I'd be praying for her and her family, and we parted ways after a few hours. Nothing monumental happened, it wasn't even that exciting, but it felt like a huge accomplishment for me to set aside my agenda and do what was more valuable instead of more urgent.



Without God's guidance, without the Holy Spirit inside of me, I would be completely incapable of resisting the urge to run over people for the sake of finishing a job. That is very obviously not God's heart, and it's a slow process changing my selfish mind into the humble mind of Christ.



But praise God! I've made one step in that direction!
This was a short blog, but i just wanted to share that story and process a bit myself. :)