Concerning Mustard Seeds

I've been doing a whole lot of thinking lately. It's kind of the norm for me, but lately it's been even more out of control. I think that self-examination is only natural for someone like me. I'm 21, my best friends are all getting married and starting careers, and I still play in cardboard boxes. I'm not saying I think I'm immature or that I regret my way of life, I just think that it's natural to examine yourself and try to figure out what makes you tick when you're not falling in line with the normal way of doing things.

All this thinking has led me to consider myself and my vision for the future. Most people tend to picture themselves settling down and getting a job in some nice suburb and raising a family. A few people picture themselves doing all of that in a bigger house, but the American Dream rarely changes from person to person. Me? I think I'd rather be eaten by a shark than live the normal life.

I'm not about to suggest that what other people have planned is sinful, is wrong, or is even small plans. It takes a lot of work to raise a family, and I respect that. What I'm saying is that for me, for Jake, the average life just isn't going to cut it. If I were to settle for something like the conventional wisdom then I think I'd be thinking small. I serve a big God with big plans, and to think that human plans can stack up to his is just plain silly. Maybe I belong on the plains of Africa with James taking care of orphans. Maybe I need to go to the ghettos and preach the word. Or maybe I need to get off my butt and finally become a true Christian, not just the American Christian that our culture has created.

One thing that is always scary to do is to share your dreams. So with that in mind, be gentle on me. There is so much I want to do with my life, I want to spend at least a year in another country doing relief work, I want to help kids in the ghettos find some hope, I want to help stop child soldiering in Africa, I want to see China, I want to help start a revival in the church, I want to teach, I want to come back to York, and at some point I'd like to get a masters and a doctorate in something so that I can do my own research on humans.

Big list, I know. There are nights where I literally lose sleep trying to figure out how I'm going to get it all done. The thought that I keep coming back to is that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains. But what bugs me is that anyone can move a mountain. The real challenge is moving a human heart. It's dang near impossible sometimes to motivate people, especially yourself. I wrestle with this thought, wondering how much faith is it going to take to move myself. I wonder if it should be easy because of the mountain thing, or if Jesus was being ironic and saying humans are tougher to move than mountains.

When it's all said and done, I find peace in this: faith is a self-sustaining thing. If you have just a little bit of it, it will take care of itself and motivate and multiply itself. Maybe the mustard seed itself isn't what moves mountains, maybe it's the big mother plant that grows out of that seed. If you lack faith, pray for more. The fact that you realized you lack faith means you have more faith than you thought in the first place.

(jake)