Running to Worship

I used to get looks (and oftentimes comments) as I walked from my dorm to the gym while everyone was outside of the chapel chatting before they went in to worship.

"Skipping chapel for the gym (again)?"
"Why don't you just run after chapel?" (As if I hadn't thought of that idea.)
"Your priorities seem off."

Don't get me wrong, sometimes I go to chapel then run afterwards. Sometimes I run as long as I can before chapel and then make it back in time to worship. I don't skip chapel everyday. (Not that I would give two hoots about it if someone never ever came to chapel- do what you do.)

I'm just saying this happens often enough that people notice when I walk to the gym.

A friend asked me why I don't just wait until after chapel has started if I don't want to hear people be rude about my habits. I could do that. But I think should be able to expect people to respect me enough to let me do my own thing without criticizing me.  I don't do it to get a rise out of people- I have other ways of doing that.  And maybe I should wait an extra ten or fifteen minutes to walk to the gym.  But that's not the point.  When I want to run, I should be able to walk across the quad and go run without people judging me.

Did you notice my first sentence says that I used to get looks from people?  Nope, it doesn't happen anymore.  Probably because of my "I don't give a shit" attitude, but maybe because I actually have my priorities straighter than people first thought.

Here's why I sometimes run instead of going to chapel:

It has nothing to do with not having enough time.
It has nothing to do with school work that I need to get done.

It has everything to do with the fact that I am able to worship God wherever I am, during whatever I am doing.  And for me, running helps me focus on God.
It has everything to do with the fact that I cannot attend to my spiritual health until my mental, emotional, and physical health is straight.

I don't think this isn't the same for everyone, but I'm not making it up either. According to Abraham Maslow, we need certain things as human beings before we are able to truly achieve any "self-actualization," which (right or wrong), I translate as my spiritual health.

Here is Maslow's pyramid of needs: 

I have come to realize that when I do to chapel just because people say I should, I don't want to be spiritual. I don't even really want to worship God. When I try to fulfill my spiritual needs before my bottom level physical need (health/exercise) or my emotional needs (esteem through feeling good about myself) or my mental needs (security that I am not running my mind into the ground), I cannot bring myself to be spiritually present. Everything else starts to break down.

I realize that this starts to sound weird when you talk about people who have had major tragedies and lost their homes and are fighting to legitimately fulfill their physiological needs. Most people find spirituality the only thing they can cling to in those situations.  But I'm not in that type of situation.

I live a relatively comfortable life. And should I be thanking God on an hourly, secondly basis? Yes, absolutely. And I worship like that. I thank God constantly. It's not a process or a checklist I go through in my brain: do I feel healthy? Am I mentally okay? How am I feeling emotionally? Good? Okay, now I can go worship God.  That's not how it works.  It is an ongoing process and some days I don't feel as if I can sufficiently worship God in a chapel the way I can on a treadmill.

An organized church service does not always feel like appropriate worship for me.  Sometimes disciplining myself to run nine miles feels more appropriate because I can focus on JUST Him, something I find hard to do when I am in chapel.

I understand that it is unconventional. I don't always worship in a chapel. I'm not always wearing dress shoes. But I worship God in the ways that feel appropriate and it doesn't feel right for other people to judge me for it. After all, it's my salvation and my relationship with God that is at risk not theirs, right?

Mission Trip

You might be thinking, “Sarah is going on a mission trip?” That’s a completely fair thought. I keep asking myself that too (except in the first person, not the third person). Seminary is really intense right now and this is not a good time to go on a mission trip. But I’m not sure if there is ever a “good time” to go on a mission trip. 

Next summer I will have Clinical Pastoral Education. 

Then another full year of school. 

The summer after that, I will hopefully be preparing for a move to my internship site. 

Then internship. 

Then school. 

My first call. 

Life. 

I'm not sure if there is ever a "good time" to go on a mission trip- especially as a full-time graduate student. 

And I could probably come up with a list of reasons why I shouldn’t go, but I keep coming back to the one reason why I should – God loves people.

I’ve been trying to live through love in the life I currently have. It’s easy to pray for far off places and far off people, but loving who you live and work with is a challenge. I’ve been trying to see my life as a mission field, not just this trip. And it has been cool to see the way God has used this new approach to everything from the way I work with my classmates to the way I treat people in traffic. But now, it’s time to take the things I’ve learned to a new longitude and latitude.

I’m going to Honduras for ten days. We are going to be doing a a building project and working in a medical clinic. But we are also going to hang out with children, learn about the culture, and be loved by people who have absolutely no reason to love us.  There will be a community built and love stared that is only possible through the love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Going wasn’t a hard decision. When it comes down to it, Jesus laid out a pretty simple plan for us, didn’t He? Love God and love others. Nope, deciding to go was easy.  Also, the last time I tried resisting what God wanted me to do, I ended up doing it anyway (hence my being in seminary in the first place). Paying for it, however, is a real challenge.

To be honest with you, I just don’t have $2,000 laying around my dorm room with me while I’m eating baked Tostitos chips and watching Glee. So, instead of selling my plasma 43 times, I decided to send letters to people I don’t usually write and ask for something I don’t usually ask for: money. 

I’d love if you could financially support me on this mission trip. A little, a lot, anything would be great. You can stay updated on my progress and trip here on my blog.

I completely understand if you cannot support me financially, but if you could pray about this trip, that would be awesome. There will be a whole host of obstacles that pop up and entangle themselves around our ankles as we prepare to go love the people of Honduras. And knowing that you are praying would mean a lot to us.

Thank you for reading this rambling post. And I hope to hear from you soon.

Why are people poor?

I think many of you probably know that my most recent and engaging call has been pushing me (maybe not away from parish ministry but) toward mission work in a Spanish-speaking country.

So when I heard that I have the opportunity to go to Honduras this January with some really amazing classmates, I jumped on the chance like a slightly crazy and desperate girl.

In preparation for my mission trip to Honduras, I will be writing about some missional things.  This first post is how I responded to our application question.  It got me thinking about my own identity in Christ and whether or not I am really living into that.  

Why are people poor? What role should the Church have, if any in responding to poverty?

People are poor because we are a broken humanity.  People are inherently self-centered and concerned with having enough and, in the Northern Hemisphere, an abundance of resources.  We live in a Western society that shouts, “more!” in every commercial, store front, and magazine.  Capitalism buys into the excessive culture and perpetuates it until it is out of control.  Westernized countries own the most wealth in the world because of a society that is disconnected from the needs of the entire world.  As long as broken, selfish people are in charge of distributing resources, there will always be people who do not have enough.  

The Church is all about identity.  If, as missionaries, Christians are able to confuse the identities of people in other nations as well as our own nations, to the point of only considering ourselves Christian, the first step to end poverty will be accomplished.  This is not an easy task.  Changing the core identities of people who have been told for hundred of years that they are American, European, or African is not something that will be accomplished overnight.  

Responding to poverty is not about charity from Westernized countries.  It starts with a change in identity, continues with education, and is carried out with love that transcends borders and ethnicities.  The Church must provide an alternative to wasteful selfish consumerism, and thus far, we have been pretty unsuccessful at providing an example for Christians and nonChristians.  

Let me know how you would respond to this question. Why are people poor?  What, as Christians, are we called to do about it?  How can we practically live that out in our lives today?