Sometimes…
A guest post by Terry Kile
Sometimes…
God whispers in your ear and touches your heart and he says “this way – go here – do this.” And you have a choice: to listen or not. That decision, seemingly small at the time, can have huge and lasting effects on your life.
It is an invitation to go to Ukraine, to be in a youth camp, to work with kids, to hand out Bibles, to show God’s love, to teach them to love God and love others. That invitation, that whisper, that nudge can bring you into contact with amazing people from around the U.S. and around the world. Those people can enter your heart and become a part of you forever. That team can become the family for whom you’ve been looking. That activity can become the life-mission for which you’ve been longing. Those friends can become so much a part of your very essence that you cannot bear to be apart from them. That country and those kids can dominate your mind even when not at camp – they can invade your sleeping dreams almost every night, and become the primary goal of your waking dreams. That adventure, that calling, that activity, that one-in-a-lifetime and forever-life-changing activity in a Ukrainian youth camp can be amazing.
Sometimes…
God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. They are weak and uncertain, or are proud and overly sure. They are ordinary, everyday people like you and I. They bind themselves together with his love and together become unstoppable, insatiable, unchanging in their desire, no, in their need to be together in that country with these kids in this camp.
The Americans find new and amazing friends among the Ukrainian interpreters. The Ukrainian interpreters find strength and encouragement among the Americans. Both Americans and Ukrainians learn from each other what God’s love is really like. Both groups enter each other’s worlds and live in the hearts of each other. These people that hear the whisper, that step over that threshold into a new and amazing adventure – these people are never the same again.
Sometimes…
God loves a land and a people and a generation so dearly that he sends others from far away to teach and live his love among these children he loves.
This Ukrainian country is still so young, but is home to a people that are ancient. These people have lived at the crossroads of empires for thousands of years, who have been pushed and dominated and hurt by greed and power-seeking of neighboring nations. These people saw the birth of Christianity for an entire continent, saw it subverted and used for political means, and now so desperately want it back. These people want God’s word, want his love, and want to know Him. These people want God and will eagerly respond to God if, and when, someone listens to God’s whispered invitation to join him in that land, to bring his love and show them first-hand what his love is like.
Sometimes…
I hear God whisper to me. And I take a step of faith over a threshold into a land far away. And my life is changed forever. And I go back again and again. Because I must.
God is already there in Ukraine. Waiting. For you, too. To listen to his whisper.
This time…
Will you say yes?
-Terry Kile (Team Imagine)