A burning heart of Escapism?

Aching for yonder shores and longingly scanning the distant horizon may well be God’s call on our lives. But it also may be our impatience with the monotonous minutiae of the daily grind. Escapism is not fulfilling the great commission.  

Regardless of our location, abroad or at home, all ministry is inescapably local. Every worker in a global context must embrace the monotonous minutiae of a new daily grind after the plane lands—figuring out the postal service, dealing with the cell phone company, conjugating verbs in the slow and tedious study of the language. If we cannot be faithful to do our statistics homework or collaborate with our coworkers, then we may lack the strength of character required for dealing with the meticulous annoyances of a more radical life beyond the romanticized horizon.

via relevantmagazine.com

I love the heart test behind this article. I am ever wanting to leave the place that I am at, yet this is what I am called to: today. In church we have been cracking the surface of the book of James. The passage in chapter four hit me hard: Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

I do not know what tomorrow will bring, am I wasting the glory of this moment by wishing I was elsewhere? Most definitely. I may be called to another place in my lifetime, but being unable to love this time and this moment only deters that from happening.

I am learning to rest on God. And God has brought me through today. For that I give thanks. This moment is a mist, and I pray that I make the most of it.