By Lisa Greey —
How do you pack when you are going on a trip? I tend to over pack. I come home with a least three items I never wore. The more I travel, the lighter I have learned to pack. This was due to some horrific experiences with way too much baggage. Let’s just say due to a broken wheel on a large rolling suitcase, I arrived to my Rome hotel with bruises and scrapes on my leg from the bag hitting me so many times up the metro, down the metro, on and off the bus, etc! So now I’m more accustomed to traveling light, but there is still the anxiety of “Do I have everything I need?”
Jesus commissions the disciples in the Gospel today. He literally sends them out to convert the world for Christ and the Church. This is before planes, trains and automobiles. The disciples would go primarily on foot, sometimes by boat or donkey, to evangelize. My packing list for this kind of trip, especially given it is similar to going to a third world country today, would include the following:
- Food
- Water, lots of it
- Tent for shelter, in case of getting stuck between locations
- At least 3 sets of clothes
- Plenty of soap to wash those clothes
- Soap to wash me and a towel
- Money, exchanged to the local currency
- Antibiotics, in case I got sick
Ok we’ll stop there, but you see the point – long packing list. Yet Jesus tells the disciples the opposite: “He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick.” What? No clothes, food or money? Seems pretty crazy to me!
What’s the underlying point here? It is something that is absolutely foreign and radical for our culture: Total Reliance on God. Put another way, “Where God guides, he provides.” “No, that’s impossible,” you might be responding in your head. It sounds impossible to you because you’ve probably never given God the opportunity to provide for you, given him the space and freedom to fill in the missing pieces of your life, your needs, your desires. Often we are so busy trying to make things work out for ourselves, and anxious because of this, we don’t allow God to provide for us. You know what’s impossible? That 12 men would change the world by proclaiming Christ. How did they do it? Not by a large packing list, but by total surrender to God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He provided shelter, food, friendship, hope in times of persecution, faith communities and so much more. What could your life be like if you let God provide, and chucked your baggage to the side?
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