It was 7:00am and I was sitting on the beach in Cancun with my beautiful wife discussing Amsterdam and community and God. They were the same for us just three months ago. We miss our life in Amsterdam. We were drinking coffee. I noticed it from about 15 feet away, a small creature struggling slowly up the sand. Maybe I was imagining something. A few minutes passed and again the creature caught my eye - a hermit crab, creeping up the sand, away from the ocean on a journey to... well, I'm not quite sure. I was tempted to turn him around and send him back to the ocean from where he came. Surely he would be happy there. But, then again, who was I to say where he was going?
Either way, his journey was a long one. He had to crawl through dangerous land to go where he was going. There were predators along the way, mountains of sand, and even hideous cigarette butts to contend with. Where was he going...? I wanted to turn him around.
Sometimes I feel like people want to turn me around. They think they know where I'm going. Does it ever feel that way to you...? I have been on the journey with God for about five years now and there have been many challenges and obstacles along the way, my own sand mountains, my own cigarette butts, my own predators. Sometimes it doesn't feel like I know where I'm going and that the only thing safe seems to go back home, to where I came from, to where things are nice and clean and normal.
Jesus wants something different (matthew 7:13-14). And though, the world may want to pick us up and turn us around, Jesus wants us to keep going (luke 9:62). He wants us to leave our world where it lays and follow him (Mark 1:16-20). I can't help but to realize how much I fight the message of the Gospel, how much I desire to turn around at times, how much I struggle just to obey. There is Jesus though, around every corner, on top of every hill, along every valley - he is there - waiting, wanting, hoping, loving.
I pray that my brothers and sisters in Amsterdam fight to keep going.
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