one moment at a time

It's almost the end, and yet we're still learning. This last Sabbath we experienced an Indian communion service with foot washing. It was very different from the ones we have a home. It felt like a ritual ceremony and it may have been the most uncomfortable foot washing I've ever done... If I was not a christian and I attended this service for the first time, I'm not sure what I would have thought... I have always wondered why the services in India are so formal and always follow a strict protocol so to speak. Things are done in a specific order and the song must begin at a certain part of the service, the sermon and prayers have to be a certain length etc. It's somewhat awkward and sometimes it feels very staged. I wonder if it's because there is so much Hindu and Muslim influence in India, and those religious and worship practices follow a specific routine? I always feel like worship should be more flexible than this. God isn't expecting us to follow someone's made up rules about how long our prayers or sermons should be because usually the same words end up being repeated and everyone in the audience becomes uncomfortable kneeling or standing and lose focus of the thought anyway. God wants us to worship. That's it. He made us differently, and I believe he expects us each to have a different way of worshiping him. That includes Indian people! For us, their services feel awkward and too long, but for them, it is worship, and I respect that.

This week the 10th class students go to a nearby town everyday to write their government exams. You could feel the nervous excitement exuding from each one of them as we gathered to pray for them in the staff room this morning. It reminds me that the end is near and we now have less than a month in India. And I can join the 10th graders in nervous excitement. I find myself becoming more and more anxious everyday. Usually time goes by so fast, but the closer it gets to the end, the slower it seems to go. I have to keep telling myself to slow down! Enjoy the last precious moments I have and don't take them for granted.

Another thing that I see happening the closer we get to the end is that I am becoming less and less tolerable of the little things that get on my nerves. I'm thinking too much about how soon I get to be home and focusing less on how I should be living in this moment, being thoughtful towards people who sometimes drive me crazy. There are times when Sid, Trevor and I all look at each other knowing exactly how the other person is feeling because we are being asked to do something that seems so meaningless and time consuming. But life is different here. People worship differently. Not everyone has a computer or camera. Technology is foreign. When church drags on for too long and I can't understand the speakers English--I should use that time to meditate in my own way of worship. When someone wants to borrow my camera to take 2000 pictures of the same person feeding cake to every one in the school, then so be it! When I'm invited to a last minute birthday party and then expected to give a worship talk on the spot, I'll do it. We aren't full time teachers. We aren't necessarily teaching these kids all they need to know about English and other subjects in school, but what we can do to give someone joy, we should be happy to do. India has taught me to relax. To live in the moment. My job is to love and to show love I'm not always going to be comfortable, it might actually be pretty inconvenient and irritating. A friend of mine wrote a blog post that reminded me how there is no joy without sorrow and no gain without pain. I have to constantly remind myself of this, I can't always show love without hardship.

It is so hard to see the good in some situations. In addition to the little issues, it's even harder to fix problems that come from deep in your soul, from your childhood or your genes, from life experiences that bend and shape you as a person. Some things you can't just fix one time, there is no one time fix. You have to go on this life journey fighting the same issue the whole way through and its not possible without higher help. Living in this moment is what matters. I am still here. Fighting the small issues and the larger ones one day at a time. We just have to keep going, one revelation, one faithful prayer for a forgiving heart, and one prayer of thanks at a time.

cherishing every moment of this face...