Today I wish I were a Settler, not an Explorer.
Exploring is wonderfully exciting. Especially on the mountain tops. But today as I explore what feels like the valley of the shadow death, it makes me wish I were a Settler.
Setters are often blessed with the comfort of predictable continuity, familiarity and stability. Settlers tend to have a defined role. They often contribute a needed skill or expertise that fits nicely into a social and economic system.
Right now as I explore there is no comfort. There’s no stability, and there’s definitely is no sense of continuity or predictability. I can honestly say I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know where I’m going. All that I can perceive is that I know where I have been. And I know that God was faithful there.
I was asked yesterday if I thought God had forsaken me. Without hesitancy I said no. God has been faithful, and I am grateful for his faithfulness. It seems that right now I am in the midst of a somewhere that is important. I just don’t know where this somewhere is. Even in saying this, I really don’t know what it means, and I am not sure what it is that I am supposed to be learning. But I am learning a lot. Someone referred to it as crossing a desert. In those times you keep moving because the alternative to stopping is death!
Here is what else I know. While there is no clarity, there is hope. The hope is that I have strength for today and that there is bright hope for tomorrow. Right now, that’s all I’ve got. Tomorrow I will have a little more of both for the tomorrows that are to come after that.