At this stage of the journey I could write a blog about almost anything. Endurance would be a good subject... With only 22 days to go I have to bite my lip more every day. Even long suffering or forbearance would fit. And when I see the word ''fit'' I am reminded about some of my clothes that does not fit as nicely as they did when I started the journey. My physical, mental and emotional fitness at this stage is also not something to write home about.
Despite my frustrations and irritations God opened my eyes to see His love in everyday situations.
Not the feeling love. The doing love. Sometimes love feels. And we all like to feel that love. But most of the time love does.
Love is when you spend a night in the desert in Peru and the people of the nearby neighbourhood bring you their personal matresses and blankets to sleep on.
Love is when someone volunteers to take half a piece of bread when the food team accidentally only bought 12 pieces instead of 14.
Love is when someone invites a group of 14 people for lunch when they know that by doing this they themselves won't have much to eat for the next few days.
Love is taking 14 people into your home and volunteering to do the entire group's washing.
Love is sacrificing your free time and taking someone else's food team day because they are sick in bed.
Love is swopping your backpack with your friend's heavier backpack because you could see she is really struggling.
Love is someone buying plane tickets for your parents so that they can fly halfway around the world to visit you in Colombia.
Love is visiting a complete stranger in the hospital 2 days consecutively because they do not have any family in the country.
Love is sacrificing your entire week's schedule because 14 people suddenly showed up on your doorstep with nowhere else to go.
Love is welcoming someone who has just been through a divorce into your house and giving them a place to stay in order for that person to recover.
Love is benefiting others at the expense of yourself. At the expense of YOURSELF.
When love is a theory, it's safe, it's free of risk. But love in the brain changes nothing.
Love is Jesus. The One who touched lepers and dead bodies and who wasn't afraid to get His holy hands dirty with the problems of this broken world.
Love is Jesus calling me His friend when I deserve it the least.
The kind of love that God created and demonstrated is a costly one because it involves sacrifice and presence. It's a love that operates more like a sign language than being spoken outright.
After everything I have seen this year, the love I have seen has touched my heart the most. In the small acts of kindness as well as in the bigger acts of sacrifice. I want to agree with Bob Goff when he says the following in his book ''Love does'':
''I want to go barefoot because it’s holy ground; I want to be running because time is short and none of us has as much runway as we think we do; and I want it to be a fight because that’s where we can make a difference. That’s what love does.''
1 Cor 13: 8-13:
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.