In ten days I will be stepping off the airplane into Sydney, Australia my home for the next five months. The program directors have been sending us e-mails to encourage us to begin to mentally and spiritually prepare ourselves for our time away from home. They have repeatedly stressed the importance of not considering this time abroad to be a vacation, but rather a pilgrimage; a journey in which we will be stressed and pushed to our spiritual limits. Not only do we have to adjust to being without our friends and family, we have to adjust to being in a new country and learning how to adapt.
This past weekend I went to church at North Campus at Olivet and Pastor Kendall used a quote from the Chronicles of Narnia to help put Jesus into perspective. It's one of the last scenes in the movie and Aslan is walking along the beach while Lucy is watching him leave with Sir Tumnus. Lucy is sad and wants to know why he is leaving and Sir Tumnus replies, "He isn't a tame lion" and Lucy tells him, "But he's good". Pastor Kendall was showing that God isn't some nice tame God whom we can carry around in our pockets and contain him. He is a big God but as Lucy said, he is GOOD. I'm excited to see how this untame God is going to radically change my life in Australia. I want to be open to this God and not only try to follow the "tame" God especially while I am in Australia.
Today I am going to start packing and getting ready to go. My list is seeming pretty long for having to fit into one suitcase and a bookbag. We'll see what happens!!
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