Something worth losing EVERYTHING for...

And so I have arrived in the United States.

It's strange, I haven't done much culture shock yet, besides always having to think twice before putting the toilet paper in the toilet instead of the trashcan. I think New York is a good transition, because we are still minorities. It will be a bigger shock when we go to our little mostly-Caucasian towns. New York is only 30% Caucasian, and especially the Bronx has a large Hispanic population. So we make ourselves feel at home by reminiscing about Honduras and listening to our favorite Spanish songs, Christian and secular.

Right now we are going through Anita Keggy's JoyShop ministries "21 day Challange" through the book of John. We just started and so just finished day 2 in our personal devotions. It's really neat to be able to do our personal devotions and then just talk about the different things we got out of the same chapter. Along with our devotions, we are reading the book "Radical," by David Platt. I'm not super far, but so far it's been really intense. Today's reading for my devotion was John 2, when Jesus overturns the tables in the temple. Melanie and I were talking about it while we visited World Vision, just how Jesus was kind of a maniac! I never realized it before, but he made a whip! That's pretty insane. He was so "radical." And he calls us to be radical, completely insane. He asks a lot to follow him, he says we will be homeless, he says we can't bury our parents or say goodbye to our families, we have to give everything we have away, and take up our cross, this torture weapon, and THEN we can follow him. He wasn't exactly looking for popularity.

Jesus calls us to be completely insane and radical, but in exchange for this we have the treasure. David Platt illustrates this by kind of retelling the story of the pearl in the field. I love the picture he paints, so I'm going to copy the passage here:

"Imagine walking in a field and stumbling upon a treasure that is more valuable than anything else you could work for or find in this life. It is more valuable than all your have now or will have in the future.

You look around and notice that no one else realizes the treasure is here, so you cover it up quickly and walk away, pretending you haven't seen anything. You go into town and begin to sell off all your possessions to have enough money to buy that field. The world thinks you're crazy. "What are you thinking?" you friends and family ask you.

You tell them, "I'm buying that field over there."

They look at you in disbelief. "That's a ridiculous investment," they say. "Why are you giving away everything you have?"

You respond, "I have a hunch," and you smile to yourself as you walk away.

You smile because you know. You know that in the end you are not really giving away anything at all. Instead you are gaining. Yes, you are abandoning everything you have, but you are also gaining more than you could have in any other way. So with joy--with joy!--you sell it all, you abandon it all. Why? Because you have found something worth losing everything else for.

This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches."

-Radical, by David Platt, pgs. 17-18

I'm working on being willing to lose everything for the treasure ahead of me...and for the treasure of the relationship I can have with such a radical God right now.

-Evi