Look to the sky! It's Unimpressive Man!

To quote a certain mentally deranged Hatter, "It is good to be working at my trade again."

Speaking of trades...

"What do you do?" tends to be one of the most commonly asked questions now that I find myself outside of an undergrad program. Most of the time, I am tragically underwhelmed by my answer. I feel safe making something of a general statement, that being that we are generally unimpressed by what we do. This needs to change.

Let's start with this; if someone were to ask you "What do you do?", what would you want your answer to be? For me, it would be "I'm demonstrating God's love on a college campus while fighting crime in my off time." No, I'm not kidding, I legitimately wish I could spend the four flex hours I have in my internship finding and then in turn combatting all manner of criminal activity. Why do I feel the need to include this strange after-hours addition? Because I don't think what I do in the day-to-day is all that exciting.

Why do I think that? Why do I wish I could be like my friend's friend, who's current mission involves rescuing (a synonym in this case would be kidnapping) children out of the sex trade? Random side note, his wife drives the getaway car, talk about having like minds for service. What is so attractive about that kind of life that makes me lament at the mediocrity of my own service?

In this case, I believe boredom to be a choice. I have chosen to not recognize the (at times incredibly) exciting aspects of what I do. For example, at some point in my time at Western, I've seen people come to know that Lord for the first time. Scripture tells me that all of heaven was throwing a gigantic party when that happened, and I got to be a part of it. My reaction to this news? I gave a resounding "cool." That wasn't my work as a missionary being boring, that was me not letting the amazing work I get to be a apart of excite me. Sure, I'm not punching a drug lord in the face or smuggling Bibles into a closed nation through a network of caves by cell phone light, but when did that become the definition for exhilarating?

I believe the root of all of this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of where we get our definition of exciting. Thinking on the examples I've mentioned, each one allows for the telling of a tale which carries an air of "look at the this amazing thing I did (for the Lord)." That parenthetical is important, as it too often reflects our attitude towards this type of work. We want that story to be our story, because it makes us more interesting. It's quite easy (tragically so) for God to become an afterthought in the spinning of these epic yarns.

The fundamental question we need to ask, then, is what does God find exciting. Yes, He loves that people are rescuing children from the sex trade. He also loves someone who will go into a nation and lobby for legislation which would crack down on the sex trade to the point that the industry disappears. Great people often don't inspire change by chucking a molotov cocktail at a problem. They organize, go for really long walks (or marches, if you will), and speak wisdom at every opportunity. They talk to the right people and inspire change a gunshot or a getaway care never could.

I believe that certain times call for both of these approaches, the dramatic and the seemingly unimpressive. Woe to us, though, if we make what we see as "exciting" the go-to response for every incident. What we truly need is wisdom, the wisdom to determine how we can best serve right where we are, as opposed to constantly dreaming for that more "exciting" future. Maybe we'll be blessed with the opportunity to be astounding, or maybe not. Either way, we need to do something. We choose whether or not that something is exciting.

With His love and grace,

Taylor