The conversation I had with the other team members on Voxer was a morbid one. Our ministry leader’s aunt passed away, and the funeral was scheduled the day after she and her husband were set to leave for their long-planned vacation to celebrate his retirement. Should they go on their trip or cancel to attend the funeral?
So many times, we examine the spiritual giants of the Bible and the highlight reel where God shows us His great power working through them. Still, most of their days, they were feeding their people and animals, just like us. As I began feeling called to “home missions” at age 17 through foster care and adoption, I felt God asking me to offer up my most precious resource: my family.
I’d spent the morning shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of women. We were woken up by worship music, then taught with the word and prayed over. Loved was how I’d describe the aftermath. The speakers touched our hearts and heads, and the organizers cared for our every need.
In Spanish, when more people come for a meal than you plan, you say you’ll “add more water to the beans.” Meaning you’ll use what you have, add what you need to stretch to meet the demand, and trust that God covers it. When we step into our God-given nature as inviters, we regularly find that God adds more water to the beans; He gives us what we need.
I am convinced that the way we are meant to “give back,” or to love those around us can be as vastly different and ever-changing as the sky outside of your window right now. There once was a time when I believed that there was a clear prescription for loving and being loved, with a measuring stick alongside of it to indicate how well I was adhering to Biblical standards. The longer I live, the longer it seems to me that God has a complex, beautiful purpose for various stages in our lives, as well as for the people who surround us at any given time.