For When I {still} Don't Have the Words

 In my post last week, I mentioned still not having the words to say. How am I supposed to put a trip like our Ethiopia trip into words? Where do I even start? I was beginning to experience frustration over this incapability to find the words. Words that accurately relate my experiences in a poverty-stricken country back to middle-class America.

 I would sit here and think about the fact that the backpack I'd set down on the floor of my sponsor sister's one-room house contained more money than her entire house cost to rent for a month. My seemingly small amount of spending money was more than her family makes in a month.

 And then today, some song came on {I don't even remember what song it was- go figure.} that spoke of this. Even before time began, THE Word was. In the beginning, all things were created through The Word that was with God. As I spent ten days chasing the heart of God halfway across the world, The Word was life and light in the darkness. The Word was God. And for the two months I've spent searching for words, The Word was already there, woven into every story bottled up in my heart.

 Maybe it's strange. Maybe it doesn't quite make sense, this peace that I found waiting in the Word. Because maybe, it seems like I still don't have the words. But you know what? It's okay. It's okay because in John 1:1-5 I found the words, His Words that speak what I cannot.

 His Words speak the story that unfolded that week. His Words speak the story of the light that the darkness could not overcome. His Words tell the story of life in Him, of being chosen by Him. That's the story that reverberated both in my life and in the lives of those I met. It was not a story of guilt on my part, nor shame on theirs. Instead, it was a beautiful song of praise that rang out from the lives of His people.

 You know, it's so easy to feel guilt over the fact that their one set of clothes is literally falling apart and you have a whole closet of stuff you never wear. It's easy to feel guilty about your bedroom back home that is bigger than an entire house holding 5 people. Dropping $5 for a Starbucks drink while in Ethiopia who knows what all that would buy, what kind of selfish person am I?! Guilt heaped on more guilt.

 But while I spent ten days among the people of Ethiopia, there wasn't room for guilt. Because in Ethiopia, they grasp the beautiful fact that "all things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created."  There were no differences between us. We all were simply His creation, His vessels used to further the Kingdom from Ethiopia back to America. Not to say there wasn't heartbreak, because heartbreak comes not from a stance of, "Wow, I'm so much better off than them": heartbreak comes from letting people into your life. It comes from jumping into the difficult times and letting their pain become your own.

 Even then, the joy was greater than the heartbreak because each of us, Ethiopian and American, know the Words of I AM. The Words that are the beginning and the end and that surpass anything we could ever dream of. I still may not have all the right words but it doesn't matter because I, just like my sisters and brothers in Ethiopia, know The Word. And The Word that is God speaks far greater than I ever could.