In exactly a week I leave for Grand Rapids, Michigan for an internship with Women at Risk International. To be honest, at first I was excited, but now I'm barely thrilled at all and mostly scared. Why do I find that most of the time my life is governed by fear? Why do I let it reign over my heart when I know that the only fear that is good is fear of the Lord. The fear that humbles me into the realization of God's true power and might and my smallness.
Ever since I got home from living in the middle east a shadow had formed over my heart. The shadow of religiosity. But it isn't just in Israel where this religiosity rules. It's here in my hometown, too. In good ole, C-ville, Ohio where Baptists reign and farmers are just there bein' haters, with good reason to be, too. I look around at my beloved town and I wonder why we ignore what God told us is good, "to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God." It's become more of a game, and not just to the religions I was surrounded by this past semester and in Cedarville, but also to me. I have forgotten that all last year I prayed to be more filled with God's joy than anything else. That when people looked at me and talked to me that they couldn't help but walk away encouraged because Christ's joy and hope so exzuded from me. But God has become a pastime, not my whole being. He has become something that I talk to but don't listen to. He has become a simple diversion to me and I am so ashamed to say that is true.
My prayer now is that God will protect my friends who are still studying in Israel, that he will show them the danger of the religiosity that encircles them. I pray that he will open the eyes of the people in my town to see that God is more than a recreation. I pray that I will be more than a fairweather friend.