As I am posting this my team is packing up and getting ready to leave the first leg of our African Expedition. Malawi has been an awesome country, and I have no doubt in my mind that I will be back one day.
As I think about the last month I think about how my idea of comfort has changed. I, now, truly believe that comfort is completely an idea, a perspective. I know that one month ago, my idea of comfort included my room in the basement, with my queen sized bed. In cleanliness, I was comfortable missing a shower one day, but no more than one day. I always had clean dishes, and now I don’t mind if something is just wiped off. Socially, I was comfortable talking to someone with an arms length in between us; I was comfortable having several conversations in a room at once.
Here all of that is different. I am comfortable going a week without a shower, is it my favorite? Not at all. I am comfortable laying in my sleeping bag, under a bug net, on a saggy mattress. I am comfortable with the social differences here. And with these realizations, I know that comfort is how I look at it; perspective.
I know that if my idea of comfort hadn’t changed, my ministry in this country would be different. I wouldn’t be content if I held on to the idea of comfort that I know as normal in the United States, but I love it here. And I love all the things that I would have found uncomfortable before this trip.
“Maybe the reason so many people, Christians included, are so discontent is that we hold too elevated an idea of comfort, too grandiose a notion of pleasure. That sets us up to get frustrated by every passing circumstance. We can end up focusing more on our circumstances than on the One who ordains them.”
-Mike Yankoski- Under the Overpass
