"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Isaiah 55:8-9
Isaiah 55:8-9While I was in high school I had the opportunity to go on a short-term mission trip to Haiti. Seeing people forced to live in conditions that were complete foreign to my rural Ohio upbringing and under the terror shamans who "controlled" the spiritual realm kind of messed with my head. Suddenly my aspirations for righteous sideburns and rare finds at the thrift store seemed awfully unimportant. These contradictions in conditions stuck with me and have crafted my world view since first breathing the arid air in Port au Prince (side note: the righteous sideburns were had by senior year).
Upon entering the university I spent much time reorganizing (or, in some cases, organizing for the first time) priorities and examining who I was. Friends, circumstances and ideas about how the world could be (a kingdom if you will) ran in and out of my head. The Gospel seemed to be before me in simple truths such as "moms need free daycare so they can finish school" or "God is glorified when kids don't have diarrhea". These simple ideals (I could have called the "musings" at the time) led me to consider how I could participate in what God is already doing in the lives of people. This landed me in Guatemala for the first time in 2005 to explore what a life in communion and service with Christ could look like.
Since that time, I continue to be stretched, bothered, broken and loved into the form I am to be.
Dan Divelbiss
