Imagine you are at a beautiful beach with soft, white sand, clear blue water, and a cloudless sky. There is a slight breeze, bringing with it the smell of hibiscus flowers and coconut. Small waves are quietly crashing on the beach, careful not to disturb the tranquility of the afternoon. Maybe you are reading a great novel. Maybe you are carelessly flipping through a magazine. Maybe you are sipping on a refreshing glass of handmade limeade. Or maybe, you are doing nothing at all.

You decide to go for a swim. As you wade out from the beach, the cool water sends refreshment through you and the soft sand under your feet feels like walking on air. You get far enough out now where you are swimming and you roll onto your back rocking like a fishing boat on top of the waves, up and down. Up and down. In this moment, you know that you are blessed. You realize that not everyone has the opportunity to live this kind of life and you are thankful. You praise God for the peace that He has granted you.

As you lay there, hovering between the water and sun, you hear something. You can’t tell where it is coming from, but it sounds like a child. As you sit up to listen, you see that you have floated down the beach and the surroundings have changed. The beach here is not so pristine and small, dilapidated shacks are visible at the edge of the tree-line.  As you continue drifting, the voice is louder, more like a cry. And then you see her, the small, fragile child sitting on a large rock on the beach. There is no one on the beach, no one else around to care for this child.

In that moment, your heart breaks for her. Something inside tells you that she is all alone, abandoned. Your immediate reaction is to do something, anything to help. What if, in that moment, you could see into the future? Like the choose your own adventure stories you read as a child, you were at a decision page but if was one you had read before and you already knew where these choices led.

Your first choice was to go to the child and help her, rescue her. This choice, you knew, meant struggle, difficulty and pain. It meant giving up the life that you knew, the peace and tranquility of your former life as you were thrust into the unknown. It meant you could never return to what you had at the old beach: the book, the smell of hibiscus, the cool breeze.

Your second choice was to swim back to your beach, head home and tell someone about the child you saw down the beach. You could hand the work off and continue on in your life of comfort, the life you had built for yourself, the life you had earned. You knew that this option meant you could return to the place you came from, unscarred, unburdened. But you also knew you would miss the adventure and the opportunity to impact another life so clearly would not come again.

As you weigh the options, time is standing still. Anticipation is heavy in the air. You don’t feel ready, prepared, to make this kind of a choice. You didn’t mean to drift so far and now be at this crossroads, but it happened anyway. As much as your heart was torn when you heard that faint cry, the decision to help has a new weight, like an anchor, keeping you stationary like a buoy in the water, unmoving. Then, you start swimming…

So, what would you choose? If serving the poor, the orphan, the forgotten, if you knew that taking the next step would send you on a trajectory that caused you to lose comfort, safety, life as you knew it, would you still do it? What if I was to tell you that taking that step, losing the material wealth, possessions and false sense of security meant that you gained something so much greater….purpose? Will we consider everything else a loss compared to knowing Christ and living out His legacy and His purposes?

Sometimes I feel like my life as an American Christian is like sitting on that beautiful beach, and I am so thankful for what God has given me. Sometimes those things He has blessed us with can wrap around us so tightly that the choice to leave them behind and serve others is unbearable. I am wrestling so much with the desires of my heart and trying to lay them at the foot of the cross. I know that it is a mirage and true life does not come from worldly success and accumulating things but if I am honest, the desires for those things are still in me.

I am praying that I have the faith and the strength to lay it all on the altar as Abraham did with his son. I want to swim in the direction of Jesus.

May we as the collective church, the people of God, proclaim together:

I consider EVERYTHING a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I HAVE LOST ALL THINGS…I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings…”

Philippians 3:8,10