Choosing God, Recklessly

I was a little harsh on Katie, from Kisses on Katie, in my post the other day, perhaps a little unmerited. I don’t mean to disparage her efforts or what God is doing in her life and the lives of the children. How much better our world would be if each of us would take the call to get involved and love our neighbors in such real and practical ways!

I do like her, and as I mentioned, she reminds me somewhat of myself. I still have a lot of maturing to do when it comes to walking alongside others and not trying to do it all myself. And I certainly didn’t have those answers at 19.

What I am learning from her story is the beauty of a reckless abandon to God’s call, a willingness to not just step outside her comfort zone, but to give up one way of life to wholeheartedly pursue another. I appreciate that. I have moved several times. Even when I have found myself in unfamiliar places or new cities, it has still been relatively easy to integrate my life into my new surroundings. I don’t have to rethink who I am or what I am doing. I have ways to connect, to interact, to live my life, albeit with some adjustments, but still live my life the way I have always known it.

How different it must be to pick up and leave everything to live a completely different life, to go from the relative abundance of middle class life in America to a poverty-stricken area in Uganda, to be in a place where running water is a luxury and starvation is too much of a reality. How do you adjust to a life like that?

In the book, which I recommend if you haven’t read it, Katie talks about the poverty there and the healthcare needs. She also talks about returning to the States and what that adjustment was like, the juxtaposition of her two worlds and the internal struggle that resulted from that reality, how hard it was for her to reconcile the materialism of America and the need in Uganda. What she realized is that she had to choose where she belonged. She couldn’t keep a foot in each place; she couldn’t make both places her home.

I think God often places us in places where we have to choose. Katie references Matthew 6:24 – “No one can serve two masters. He will hate the one and love the other or love the one and hate the other.” I think, too, of when God tested Abraham – forced him to choose God or his son (Genesis 22). Abraham chose to obey God. Katie chose to obey God and return permanently to Uganda. Do I choose God? Would I choose God if He called me to give up everything I had or to go across the world? Would I choose God over a spouse, a job, family? Would I choose God if, like Job, I lost everything (Job 1-2)?

What do you think? Do you think God calls us to give up “good things” for Him? Is this reckless abandon to God or just reckless? How do you make sense of God calling some to give it all up and others seemingly called to live a content and comfortable life?