Oh, how we love our creature comforts.
It is 10:30 in the evening, every hotel within 50 miles is booked solid. We’d managed to find one last suite with enough sleeping space for all 6 of us.
Seven hours on the road followed 2 hours of packing up the campsite. Now, tired and ready for showers and bed, we trudge into the second-floor room. Only to be greeted by the muggy, sticky blanket of warm air from the malfunctioning air conditioner. White ice thickly covers the front of the frozen-up wall unit.
Back down to the truck for an armload of bags, one of which has the blow dryer. Jacob sits on the floor trying to melt the ice while I go to the desk. No more suites. One room with a double, standard size, if we want to try it.
Back up to check on the deicing. 11:00 and Lizzie is slumped over crying, beyond tired and in need of a bath. Five minutes later, two blow dryers trip a circuit and off go our lights. The breaking point comes a step closer. At a loss for what to do, the desk clerk calls the maintenance guy…at home.
“Let me take a look at the double room,” I said. Up we go. Air-conditioning works, but half the floor space.
Doesn’t matter. We’ll make do.
So here we are. 2 kids in sleeping bags on each side of two double beds. But we are cool! And learning an important lesson:
It’s the inconveniences of the ordinary that sometimes trip us up the easiest.
Following Jesus seems quite romantic and quixotic when the big adventures are at hand. Speaking at a churches, visiting a camp, meeting new friends: those moments can be like wind beneath the eagle’s wings. We feel empowered, called, even holy there.
We’re much more vulnerable in the ordinary in-between. Hours in the truck. Preparing for bedtime after a long day. Catching up on school. Being a parent when you are way behind on sleep. Being a kid when you’re way behind on sleep.
That’s when patience seems to drain away like water down the sink. Energy is sapped, defenses go down. Discouragement, tiredness, and frustration are heavy yokes around the neck.
But if we’ll let him…and ask…Jesus meets us here. Here in in the midst of the ordinary, the humdrum of being an ordinary family called to a missionary life. And he helps us find beauty in the moment, underneath the sticky, sweaty days, the packing and unpacking of weeks on the road. The tired nights and tired mornings. In the middle of it all is Jesus, bearing his cross in order to pour out his love and life for us. He turns our burdens into blessings for those around us.
Being a missionary, or a Christian, is being a cross-bearer like Jesus. At times that cross looks noble: preaching the Gospel, building a church, witnessing to the lost, or discipling new converts. Those are great moments.
But at other times that cross looks like everyday life–broken air conditioners, cranky kids, and long drives.
But therein is the grace of Jesus: in our weaknesses, he shows himself strong. Here, more than in the spectacular, is where the image of Christ is being formed in us.
Christ does his best work in the mundane routine of everyday life. Help us, Jesus, not to miss that!
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UPDATE – We’ve finished up at Indian Springs. After a few days of family R&R in the mountains of North Carolina, we’re headed to Camp Sychar in Ohio. This Sunday we are speaking at Covenant Evangelical Methodist Church, pastored by a seminary classmate, Jamey Gremillion.
The Easleys in Haiti 