I'd Rather Be Shot

    The last three days have been really intense after getting to Victoria, with intense 8 AM to 5 PM sessions at the company where I'm doing a work-related training course. It's been really tiring; I haven't had much time to study after getting back to my hotel room, let alone explore the city. Massive amounts of snowfall and sub-zero temperatures in the last 24 hours pretty much reduced the prospect of sight-seeing expeditions to zero. So I thought I'd use this time to post some thoughts over the last few weeks that I tried to organize in my head on the ferry ride to Vancouver Island from Tsawwassen. I thought I'd use this time away from Vancouver to look back, reflect and evaluate.

    With everything that had happened in January, especially the death of my friend Yeswanth (see "Death Came Calling...And Took My Friend") and getting hired after 6 months of hard job-hunting, I've been doing a lot of thinking and planning regarding what I want to do. Life is picking up speed as a lot of things are suddenly coming together, and it's exciting! There have been plans that I've had to change, redefine, abandon, realize weren't what I wanted to do, or just became unfeasible. In the process, there have been new dreams and aspirations that God has introduced or replaced the old ones with. As circumstances come together for take-off, He is now providing the capability to accomplish things that I've had on my heart for the last few years, and I've been so happy as I've been able to get started on some of them.

    God has been incredibly kind and gracious in granting me a job that I love, with people that I like working with, in a company that I like working for, so that I can stay and serve a city that I have come to care deeply for, with a church that I love immensely. As He has done innumerable times before, God has proven once again that the biggest dreams we concoct for ourselves are dwarfed by His smallest dreams for us. And His smallest dreams are immense indeed, next to the paltry and feeble concoctions of men. So I suppose the question I've been trying to work through really boils down to this:

What am I going to do with God's dreams for me?

    I wrote a bit about some of the realizations I had come to earlier last month, in "From the Land of The Dying to the Land of The Living" and "I Wish None Of This Had Happened." Over the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking over something that my friend Sam said one evening. "If my life ever becomes about a big house and driving a Denali," he said, "I want you guys to shoot me." (I should hasten at this point to add that neither of us have anything against people who own big houses or drive Denalis). Although not quite the way I'd express it, that sentence neatly summarizes the posture of my mind and heart. If the main thing in life is to keep the main thing the main thing, then my main thing must not be forgotten. With all the opportunity for growth and service that is being put into my hands, there is also being provided the capability to carry them out. And I don't want to squander either of them. The movie "Spiderman" eloquently expressed Sam's sentiment in words that have now become famous: "With great power comes great responsibility."

    With all that God has been doing in my life - personally, publicly, on this blog and otherwise, I have a much clearer idea of what I can and want to do, both in Vancouver and elsewhere. I have been increasingly coming to this conclusion over the last couple of months - that I will do everything I can with everything I have for the sake of this city, to the glory of the God of this city and the King of these people; to give Vancouver hope in the midst of darkness, and as beautiful as their surroundings may be, show them the only real source of life in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

    There are so many things I want to do. And they will all get done because He who empowers me will keep my heart beating until my time is up and I've done what He sent me for. And my time will be up very soon. As I once used to say, everything will have a happy ending :)

    If Sam and I ever end up as one of the "walking dead" with the kind of shallow lives that terrify us, you know where to find us and how to put us out of our misery. I'd prefer to be shot alongside him. It's been a long day, time to get to bed and head out for another day of intense training tomorrow. I'm looking forward to going back to Vancouver. See you in the next post!

- The Wisdom Seeker