The exploration of life is an amazing journey, one with its hurts and pains, twists and turns, yet with joys and deep pleasures. We first discover the frustration and that feeling of "uggghh"; we feel the boredom, the pain, the deadness that comes when we're living for ourselves, when all we're responsible for is our own success and well-being. We absorb ourselves in entertainment or we find purpose that we feel we can control, and that purpose becomes our high, and every other opportunity and risk that comes by we ignore. We choose our friends and our churches based upon how much we can get out of them, yet we never feel the deep pleasure of real relationship that requires something of us, perhaps everything of us. We're let-down or we live a life of fear, hoping the fragile reality we've created in our mind won't break this week. Yet that's not real life.

The other day I found out one of our friends from a missions project in Yellowstone National Park has Leukemia. And I wonder how I'm to respond. Instinctively I'm afraid of developing friendships with people that express need that we may have to face, that may require us to respond. But eventually we find that life isn't "perfect", it's full of pain and hurt and need. But instead of feeling inadequate, can I ask what do I have to offer, what has God given me today to give away? And perhaps the one thing we fear is what we long for the most - to be a part of fulfilling that need. It's been amazing already to try to feel what she feels and to pray for her with what God has been placing on my spirit.

We will only become frustrated, irritated, angry, bored, and hurt if we're in this life for ourselves. Yet instead of hiding and running from needs all around us, if we choose to consider those needs as opportunities that God has placed in our lives rather than coincidences to be afraid of and isolate ourselves from, we will feel whole, fulfilled, and worthy of rest as we dare to expose ourselves and risk giving. When I feel dead, do I try and fill my life with something else that ultimately will just create more death? Or do I head out my door and seek one of the many opportunities all around me to bring life into a hurting world.

Summer and I were visiting Jim and Micaela Reeves in Wyoming many months ago before flying out to Spain. And Jim mentioned to me how he learned that family may be our most important ministry God gives us. I struggled with that; I didn't know what to say. I couldn't fit kids into the reality of the desires God had given me. How does that impact my desire to share Him in the third world? Yet I've recently been noticing a desire within me to share all that God has given me with a family. Something is welling deep within me to disciple my own family for eighteen years. I don't want to leave this earth without passing on a legacy of freedom from sin found in Him, without sharing the secrets of life found I've already found in Him shared day after day in love and in faith so that my family can surpass me and explore even further! And yesterday I noticed that all the reasons I have left not to have a family have little to do with wanting to share Jesus around the world; rather they are far more because of selfishness. I'm afraid that leading kids around the world will change my plans, will be an inconvenience, will require me to sacrifice my desires. And yet deep within my spirit, I long to take the risk to pour and make disciples of kids while taking Jesus' love to the nations. I long for the life that can come when even more sacrifice of my time and energy is required of me!

So many of my decisions in life have been based on, "What can I get." I'm beginning to learn to change that to "What can I give." It's a process and it will take time - but deep down I want to bring life to you and the nations. That's where life is found - in me giving His love flowing through me away!

-Joel

Is this creating life?  Does this make any difference in eternity?

I'm beginning to understand that's why I'm here at G42 - to tie off the answer to that question of "How do I create life." When I entered the World Race, I'd given up on trying to live a life for my own. Nine years before, I'd entered Michigan Tech University as a freshman surrounded by so many people fresh with optimism from high school. Almost everyone was excited about their future potential as an engineer, scientist, or computer programmer. But for me and for many, the excitement died and reality hit ... when we're in it all to make money, when we're driven by fear of failure or fear of not being successful in getting it all for ourselves, we someday, somewhere wonder why even try anymore. What's the point? There is no eternal lasting significance in meeting the requirements of success so I can die having met all of societies goals for me. I walked away from Michigan Tech having almost completed a degree yet burned because I was in it all for myself and being successful; my identity was wrapped up in defining myself through meeting my potential according to a system that often rewarded selfishness as success.  Yet God has created a purpose in each of us to give away; he created us with desires that require us to risk greatly and go where no one has ever gone before. And when we don't fulfill the potential He has created us for, we will feel abused and burned out.  And even more - the world misses out on an essential piece of life that it desperately needs!

The year I lived in Montana before leaving for the World Race, I worked getting aircraft ready for Delta Airlines in Bozeman. And it was one of the most amazing jobs I've had in my life. My heart came alive with a dream that I'd long had - to work with aircraft. I began flight school and found that I was actually very good at flying, and I loved it! Never before in my life had I found something that I could do so well and loved at the same time! But that desire required alot of me. I had to bike 12 miles into work each morning, often through frost or snow and sometimes through subzero temperatures at 3:30 in the morning. I would come home after work, and I was often too tired to eat and I'd just fall asleep until late at night when I'd get up and eat and then fall asleep again. But I did that job because I loved it, and I began to love the imperfect people that I worked with. I could be real around them, share my hurts, listen to theirs, and share Jesus with them. I learned that I didn't have to hide myself, I learned that I could be comfortable being just me. One weekend, though, I sat in a coffee shop, probably with the sun gleaming in and the snow-capped Bridger Mountains visible in the background and I wondered if it would be much easier just to get an hourly job here, a half-mile away from my house. There'd be no more cold, no more waking up early in the morning, no more worries about getting a flat tire riding on the freeway to work. And eventually I did give that job at the airport to try a much higher paying job in Houston, TX for a month. But I've always regretted the people I left and the ability to de-ice airplanes, plan loads, push-back aircraft, and just have the incredible opportunity to just touch those aircraft every morning while watching the sun rise above the mountains because I got up early enough to see it. I loved just being alone with God in the morning while drinking my cup of coffee, inspecting and servicing aircraft even when it was cold enough for water to almost instantly freeze as we filled airplanes with fresh water for the first flight out. And I loved the friendships that I made and the people I worked with.  I'm realizing now that through my work ethic, through me just being me and sharing the desires of my heart with these people while listening through their hurts day after day after day that I was creating life; I was a light in the darkness.

I think the difference is in our attitude, the difference between whether we take and create death or give away and create life. I experience death when I'm in it all for me. Yet God has given each of us so much to give away. Do I work to serve myself? Or do I work to serve others and to give every bit of life away that God has given me? It's a tough reality to receive, one that we must renew our mind to accept; that reality requires us to change the way we live life. But it's the reality that God speaks of over and over in the Bible. And the only reality that means anything to eternity. We need to be who we are, we need to follow the longings and desires that God has placed upon our hearts even if that pursuit doesn't measure up to the worlds vision of success. Am I an engineer because I can make lots of money? Or am I can engineer because I love designing even if I make just enough money to support my family. And when we are living out our dreams and desires, if we're willing to sacrifice comfort and willing to risk failing pursuing what's at the core of our heart, I think we can be far more of a light into the darkness than if we're just in it for ourselves.

I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

Do we do that? Or do we too often run from death instead of defying it. I wonder if we're often afraid of the death we see around us and hope that somehow we'll find paradise in the world somewhere else. We believe we'll find it in another job, another wife or husband, or perhaps a vacation in the perfect place. We often find a piece of land that's already green, plant crops on it until all the nutrients are gone and then look for another to do the same. But what if we could end the cycle of death, what if we could give rather than take? What if we could take a piece of desert and see it flourish; create life where only death was before? What if instead of running away from death, we had the power to create life because of Him who lives within us. Because we are created in the image of the creator of all life; we are created like God whom has created everything that posseses beauty in all of the universe. What if instead of taking life and beauty, we created life and beauty?

A few weeks ago during our practicum week, we were asked to complete some tasks for our school, G42, here in Spain. I'd been assigned to finish some computer work. And yet just a few hours after working, I just felt a deadness within my heart. Completing work inside my comfortable house just brought an utter feeling of death that I immediately hated! So although I feared of what would be required of me, I took the bus down to interact with some of the tougher people in Fuengirola. I ventured in to expose my self to the hurt and engage people that might not speak English or Spanish. Yet that challenge actually brought life to my heart. I'm made to go and bring order into the wilderness, bring life into the deadness, breath God's healing into the hurting! And through that challenge, through that risk, I then see life flowing through me.

Isaiah 42:1 says, "Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations." Is it possible that instead of looking for paradise, we are to run to the nations; we are to run to the creation that's eagerly awaiting restoration, eagerly awaiting the sons of God to be revealed? Is it possible that we are to return to restore the Pride Lands of Africa? Romans 8:15 says, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

This past weekend once again I was walking down the streets of Mijas. The sun was out, and once again the normally empty streets filled with residents peeking out their doors. Most of the people I saw had no smile. They were older and struggled to walk just a few blocks up and down the streets. They seemed to long for purpose, seemed to long for a reason to exist anymore. And honestly, I wanted to run; I wanted to just get away. I don't want to think of the inevitable - that I too may end up the same way. Is it really hopeless; am I really trapped to this end; is death really an all-powerful reality?

If this really is the end, I want nothing to do with this life. If my life's pursuits simply end up in death, why try? Why make any effort to produce life if that life will shortly die anyway? I have no desire to take and store up all I can in this life to that end. I can have the most amazing career, the most amazing wife ... but if it's just an experience that will soon end, don't I become destructive?

If I give into fear of death, if I believe that death ultimately reigns, then I'm tempted to graze, tempted to take something new and innocent, tempted to destroy and take life from the next new person or place. When there's no hope of restoration, I become destructive. Is that possibly where rape, hate, killing comes from - a heart that is overcome with despair, that is desperate to take life because it believes there's no hope for eternal restoration? Yet is it possible that instead of waiting around for something new, we get to be a part of that restoration of eternal life even today? Is it possible that we actually get to be part of an eternal restoration? Why does my heart long for something so amazing? Is there a reason that we have an understanding of microbiology that the world has never seen? Do we really think the computer or the internet was our idea? Or is it perhaps God's mind, his creativity is even right now flowing through his image-bearers for a purpose we don't yet see? I hate the idea that we develop new drugs just to extend a person's life just a little longer. Why does ethical* stem cell research that shows promise of completely restoring damaged hearts, why does growing new skin in a laboratory hit a huge desire deep within my spirit? We're finding ways to restimulate cell growth in tendons in animals where it was often thought that certain damage was almost permanent! Is our creator orchestrating something bigger than we ever imagined - "See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

I'm tired of feeling helpless in a world of death. I'm tired of feeling like only a few people get to experience a fake shadow of life for a short period of life in ignorance of the world of reality all around. I'm tired of feeling that death has overcome us and we can do nothing about it! We were meant to create life in the world around us. We were meant to be the bud that blossoms in the desert. The rose that brings life in the middle of death and decay, that stares death in the face and triumphs.

"All I am is all I have
And all, all I have to give, and I give it all to You"

- From "Alabaster Box", Julie Meyer

It's an ironic concept, isn't it? And yet beginning to cultivate pouring myself out to others has been an amazing experiment! A few weeks ago, both Summer and I felt like God was asking us to give the few hours we had together for the week to Him. Hard? Yeah. Yet that day was probably one of the best times we had together, and I don't think I could have planned an evening so amazing. We were able to pray for people on the beach, climb up into a tree and enjoy sharing what God did the past week, share Jesus with people throughout Torremolinos, and everything culminated with a completely unplanned dinner on the roof underneath the moonlight overlooking the city lights from our hilltop villa. Our time was amazing because He was flowing through us as we chose to give the best of what we had to Him... to others.

Jesus says in Acts 20:35, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." I think when we give of everything we have, when we give freely of the love that God has given us to others - especially when it's the best we've got, we receive the best of His love flowing through us. But if we just hold that love inside, we become dead. But giving allows the only love we've got - His love - to flow, and in turn we are made whole by giving.