I am getting tired of traveling. My suitcase can’t seem to stay in order. The weather is cooling down and I recently realized I haven’t packed enough warm clothes for these last three weeks. I’m tired of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and our van stinks. Yup, it really stinks. We bought air freshener and it still has a strange odor that just lingers.
And yet, as we meet new people and join a new congregation my spirits lift, my energy rises and I get just as excited as I was during the first weeks of our travels. Our message of peace, of Shalom is important and I am still excited about our opportunity to be able to share this message with others, and to hear how God is working other people to bring God’s Kingdom to life.
I continue to find joy in the journey. Joy in the conversations we have as a group as we wrestle with questions of content and our message and of things we read. In the journey of faith I have been on this summer. In the hospitality we experience and in the wonderful people we meet. Joy in the opportunity to get our hands dirty and do some labor with our bodies as we did another day with Mennonite Disaster Service this week.
The challenges of this summer continue. I still wrestle with how to talk about my faith with confidence. I still struggle with how to share peacemaking as an expression of my faith and to invite others in the conversation.
While I’m tired of traveling, I’m not ready to put our message on a shelf with the end of our travels. I will continue to wrestle with how do I serve God authentically in a world that does everything it can to distract me.
Elizabeth
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