1: opportunities

in a few weeks i am going to be asked to give my testimony to a group of people who are eagerly waiting to send me to Nigeria... to be a MISSIONARY. honestly, the word itself scares the poop out of me for the very reason that i can't imagine "real" missionaries ever using the word poop. but i know full well that God created my in-most being, i am fearfully and wonderfully made, and before any word is on my tongue my creator knows it even if it is sometimes, unfortunately, the word poop. i know that i was created to share my story, b/c it is God's story, and he has given me my own unique way of sharing myself with others that doesn't get lost in fields of TULIPs.

in thinking about "my testimony" i've realized that i have never been asked to do this before. sure, i have shared parts of my story with teens who ask good questions about peer pressure, sex and God. i've told my neighbor why i read the Bible while pointing to the verses that really solidify the reasons why grace is all she and i need. i've written essays explaining my relationship with Jesus Christ and have been offered jobs because of my answers. but this? this is different. this is the whole story or, as paul harvey likes to say, this is the "rest of the story."

so, i thought that i would start to write down some thoughts on this here blog. i figure that some people do not know my story, even people in my own family. and who knows who reads these things! perhaps my story will resonate with someone else's story who may not realize that the author is God...

as of right now i think of "my story" in three separate key moments: sara meets Jesus on a bus, sara understands the necessity of sharing Jesus while standing under a 50 ft statue of the Buddha, and sara goes to Nigeria to hopefully be the hands, feet, ears, mouth of Jesus. i hope to write about each of these moments separately but show how each builds on the other.

SARA MEETS JESUS ON A BUS
i distinctly remember seeing God's hands on a bus in tegucigalpa, honduras during my senior year of college. it was on that bus where my heart broke and changed forever. up until that exact point on that bus i had been living a fairly shallow, empty life. i grew up a PK [preacher's kid] and i had been living many of the stories you hear told about PKs. that day i was alone on a bus, i was wet from the rain, and i was upset that i wasn't able to find a taxi that would get me home faster. There was a woman sitting in front of me holding her small baby. the baby had serious health problems. he was pale, had an enlarged head, small patches of fuzzy hair, and shallow sunken eyes that never seemed to blink. i know now that this is a sign of severe malnutrition. but when i got onto the bus the sight of the baby scared me and i know that my face betrayed me. everyone on that bus knew that the white girl was afraid and they watched her take her seat a few seats away from the woman. i chose to sit behind the woman instead of anywhere near her. the bus stopped and the woman got up to claim it. she had so much to carry, bags of food from the market, diaper bag, stuff, and her baby. i could have helped her but i didn't. i was too afraid of her baby.

that is when an amazing thing happened. Jesus entered the scene. the dirty, poor money collector on the bus approached the woman. i thought that he was going to tell her to hurry up, or at the most offer to take her bags. but instead he gently took her baby and with a gentle "con permiso--with your permission" kissed him on the head and carried him off the bus.

i remember feeling so ashamed. i had the opportunity to be the hands of Jesus and i had missed it. i felt as Peter might have felt the day he denied Jesus not once, not twice, but a whoppin' three times. i realized that most of my life had been a series of denials. it was just easier to turn my back then to actually SEE what the world needed from me, what Jesus needed from me. i don't think that i knew who Jesus was until that moment on the bus. and i regret to this day not sitting down next to that woman and telling her how beautiful her baby was.

since my experience on the bus my life has been dramatically different. i am a follower of Jesus. the stories of Jesus, his passion, his peacemaking, his willingness to be a servant and wash feet, his tears shed for his friend Lazarus, his concern for the poor and widowed, his ability to discern between the ways of the world and the ways of his father in heaven challenge me every single day. Jesus was a man of action not just of words. He was human and he never missed an opportunity.

i still miss opportunities every day. i'm a sinner. but i've been washed with the blood of a man who wasn't.