I love the song "Living Well" by Switchfoot. There is a lot to unpack in the song, but I love the part where the chorus declares:
Life is short; I want to live it well.
One life, one story to tell.
After a recent trip mission trip to Oregon with my beloved church family, I left another little piece of my heart in the beautiful Northwest. Mission trips are funny because we always seem ready to go do the work God has planned for you, but more often we are more impacted by the work God does on us while we are there. This trip was no different.
I've been on enough mission trips to know that I didn't want nor did I need to have expectations, so I showed up with none. Actually, that's a lie. I showed up without too many personal expectations. I DID expect God to work. I expected my church to fall in love with the Northwest. I expected all the good things that people walk away with after reaching out into an unknown way of life. I expected nothing less than God to do what he does, and maybe get something more out of it for myself along the way.
On the last night, we teamed up with a ministry called Under the Bridge which does homeless ministry throughout the city of Portland. If you don't know anything about the Northwest or Portland, you should know that Portland has a lot of homeless people. For the most part, the weather is decently comfortable all year round and there are a lot of different outreaches that help take care of the city's thousands of homeless. Our group was signed up to do "walk abouts" where we literally walked around downtown with sandwiches and coffee for those who were not going to make it to the place where Under the Bridge had set up food, hair cutting, etc. It was about 7 or so, so many would be "bedding down" and finishing their resting place for the night.
As my smaller group set out--I think, safe to say, all a little outside of our comfort zones--I just asked God to do whatever He was going to do. Since it was the last night, I was also trying to process my experience and take in the city as much as I could. I had almost finished the book The Same Kind of Different as Me (an awesome testimony about how God changes our hearts through the story of a rich man who befriends a homeless man), so I was hyper aware of the need. I wanted my heart to be fully present and fully willing to love-on with whomever we may come into contact.
The lasting impression, as we set off for the evening, was this: We all have a story.
Well, I'll say it for you. DUH. It seems obvious, but as the night went on and as we came home, I realized that there was such a beautiful and more important lesson.
In the beginning of the week half of our team split up to go and work in Tillamook, Oregon while the other half stayed and worked in Portland. After spending 3 days with some of the most loving and sincere people I have ever met at Life Change Christian Fellowship in Tillamook, I know that no matter how we "arrive" into God's family, we all have a story.
When we rejoined our team in Portland, we got to listen to the work God was doing. Later, at a block party which hosted a rougher neighborhood, men from a half-way house, and countless others, our team members got to introduce and share the story of what God was doing that week.
At the same block party, TWO people's stories' were wildly and eternally changed when they choose to follow and begin a relationship with Jesus.
So, on that night, as we met with homeless, many uninterested in anything but the free PB&J, I tried to stay focused on loving well. I tried to remember, that no matter how or where or why they were where they were--they had a story. And I could tell you a lot more about the people we met, especially one Navy veteran named Patrick who God used to speak so much to my own heart, but I won't because it's not my story to share.
But here's the point. Here's the impression God has left on my heart.
We all have stories. Stories that make us laugh. Stories that make us cry.
We all have stories. And each and every one of those stories is precious.
So precious, that Jesus thought they were worth dying for.
Every. single. one.
Do you believe that? That you are so valuable, that you are so loved, that you are so precious to the King of kings that your story--no matter the ups, downs, or wrong turns--is worth something so much more.
You see, I left Portland the next day so grateful for the ultimate story. The one where Jesus, the son of God, chose to come and live a perfect life among the imperfect. The one where despite being sinless, he sat with sinners. The one about how even though mankind couldn't understand, Jesus went to the cross to die as a perfect sacrifice on our behalf. The one that didn't end there because Jesus came back. The ultimate story--the one that promises eternal life; the one that forgives the unforgivable; the one that loves the unlovable. That story. That's my favorite.
And do you know what I find the most beautiful?
Our stories all get woven together as we live our lives. You become part of other's stories, you star in stories you weren't even aware of, you make brief appearances in others, and still others you simply cross paths for a time before fading out. But, we are all part of humanity. As believers, we are all apart of the Church. And when you look close, you see each little thread that makes up our own stories. But when you step back, you see the Church. You see God. Because, while all our stories are oh-so-important, they come together to point back to the author.
I could write a book about all that I saw and did in Oregon this summer. I could write a trilogy about how miraculously and perfectly God works, but I would much rather invite you into what God is doing in your own church, in your own community, as well as throughout the world.
The next line in the chorus of that song is "life is short; I want to live it well / And You're the One I'm living for."
Are you letting God be the author of your story?
