PRACTICES

When I think about the word practices, I can’t help but to think of an image that I see regularly in Salvadoran life near the coffee farm filled mountains. 

 Coffee plants require shade trees to shelter the valuable plants from receiving too much sun and drying out as well as to shield them from breaking in the high winds to come in the winter months.  But with these shade trees come fallen branches that need to be cleared from the forest floor. 

Coffee farm owners often allow workers permission to come in and clear these fallen branches with a mutual understanding that the payment comes not from the owner of the coffee farm, but from someone in town who is willing the purchase the wood.  It’s somewhat of a copacetic relationship because the farm owner needs someone to clear the fallen branches and the person clearing the branches needs them either for personal firewood or to sell to provide income.

 

Coming up or going down the mountain road, it is very common to see a wood cart parked beside the road, signaling that someone is inside the farm collecting wood.  Once the fallen branches are gathered, they are loaded onto the cart and then driven down the steep mountain road and pulled further into town where someone is willing to buy wood to fuel their fire for cooking dinner.  After selling the wood, the cart is then drug back up the back up the steep mountain road that my car affords me the luxury of climbing with ease in a matter of 20 minutes so that more fallen branches can be collected, yielding more income at the close of a sell.  This type of work requires serious commitment to complete the task.  

 The person clearing the wood and filling up his cart does this practice regularly, not because he enjoys the challenge of the hunt or the exercise of the climb...but because his family will not survive without the yield of his work. 

Am I that committed to the practice of filling my “cart” 

with spiritual fuel found in God’s living 

Word?  Do I allow myself to live in a way in which I am 

daily dependent on the Holy Spirit?

In sincerest honesty, one of my biggest struggles as a missionary is keeping myself challenged to dig into God’s Word.  To seek nourishment…not just snacks from His truths.  

In my first few years of living in El Salvador, people would often ask me what I miss most from my home in the United States.  Honestly, the thing I miss the most is Bible Study Fellowship International.  While living in North Carolina, God blessed me with a very disciplined Bible Study community.  Each week I was challenged to dig deep into God’s word and soak in all that it offers.  My soul was filled on a weekly basis for seven years.  I grew comfortable in a rhythm of weekly practice of studying God’s word.  

When I first began attending this Bible study, I somehow knew that it would only be for a season.  That I would have to reap from it what I could in the time that God allotted to me in that space.  I sensed something else approaching my horizon.

While making the transition to life and ministry in El Salvador, it was immediately clear to me that God had intended the lessons I learned at Bible Study Fellowship to prepare me for my new normal.  I have thanked Him so much for those years of studying His word within a community intentionally designed to equip leaders to shine His light into the world by owning the truths within His Word.  And for giving me friendships with faithful women who lived out the truths of His Word in their daily lives.  

Yet, almost four years later, I still find myself hungering for that specific community.  realize how very rich I was in resources of Spiritual Practices while living in North Carolina.  It was something that I took for granted.

I also took for granted having study resources, worship resources, and Jesus-centered fellowship available in my native language.  While I am growing stronger and stronger in my Spanish language and communication skills…I don’t know all the worship songs by heart in Spanish as I once did in English.  I don’t have scripture memorized in Spanish the way I did/do in English.  My native language is a huge avenue through which I receive spiritual nourishment.

Maybe I struggle with the practice of digging into God’s word because I make it too difficult.  During my season in NC of digging deep on a weekly basis, God was preparing me for a particular time of drought.  I believe the Lord knew that I would need a period of time of simply soaking in all of my surroundings.  Being filled up with His Word allowed me to see those circumstances through the lense of the truths I had learned in that intense time of filling up.  Time to very simply BE STILL. 

Now as I am more settled in, and life is no longer still, I realize that I have allowed myself to get comfortable again with a form of unsatisfied spiritual hunger.  Not because I don’t have the ability to seek the Lord to fill me up in a way that quenches this hunger… not because the Sunday worship available to me is in Spanish… not because my local BSF group is an expensive plane ride away…but because I’m too lazy to do it for myself without the accountability of a group of ladies expecting me to participate in the weekly discussion.  

For so long, I thought the study I was doing in an intense accountability group was my solid food.  But now I realize it was my spiritual milk.  I was still relying on an outside source to force me to do the work of digging deep.  

I believe I am in a season of life in which I need to implement the practices God set before the Isrealites when he sent manna to the desert.  He instructed them not to pick up more than their fill, because he provided for only one day at a time…anything more gathered would spoil and rot. 

 

Lord, help me not be overwhelmed by the task of practice.  Help me to simply come to you hungry each morning, allowing you to fill up my cart with your supply for that day, trusting that you will provide what is needed for tomorrow when tomorrow comes.  Give me the same drive that the firewood man has to pull his cart, fill it up, and then drive it back down the mountain – day after day after day. Help me not seek my filling up in outside sources, but in YOU alone.  

Lead me day by day, by day, by day. 

In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

*Written in response to the weekly word prompt provided at The Grove at Velvet Ashes. http://velvetashes.com/