Katie's book—I highly recommend it
Katie Davis is the name of one of my sister’s friends from growing up.
Katie Davis is also the name of a girl from Nashville who, when merely eighteen, moved to Uganda and began adopting little girls who had been orphaned.
God called Katie to make her home in Uganda, to raise its orphaned children, to lay her life down for them, and not just for the thirteen little girls who call her “mommy,” but also for hundreds of others for whom she cares on a weekly basis.
She is only twenty-three, but she has spent the past five years of her life exemplifying the life of Christ not only to the Ugandans she loves and serves but to countless others who have read her book or read her blog.
As I’m reading, her selfless devotion to others is stirring my heart with what God has already been stirring in it—How can I lay my life down for you God? What does that mean? Let me! I will do anything for you! Show me how!
And so I started thinking…she sounds very noble to us comfortable Americans.
But most of us probably think what I initially thought, “That’s just not me. I am not called to Uganda.
That is too extreme for me.
It sounds awesome for her, but it doesn’t really apply to me, other than that it is an awesome and inspirational story.”
I also found myself in another conundrum, “I am also not single (as Katie is).
Even if I really wanted to and felt called to pack up now and move to a foreign country to care for orphans, I couldn’t just do it on my terms because God has entrusted my precious husband and me to each other first, and my call is first to love and serve him, and to go out into the world together, not separately.”
So that’s it.
I figured it out and wrapped it up with a bow.
Clap for Katie Davis, but it’s not for me!
Except that’s not right.
We Christian folk have been instructed by our loving Father to care for the fatherless of this world, the widows that we know, the poor in our cities, the sick all around us—basically, our sacrificing Lord has told us to care for the weakest and lowest and neediest around us.
In Matthew 25, Jesus speaks of when he will separate the sheep from the goats (the sheep are His, the goats are not).
To the sheep, He says:
“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me….Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
Except I haven’t been doing these things for these types of people.
I’ve been doing a lot of stuff for me.
I’ve been very concerned about my own suffering, but I have been slim-to-none concerned about the plight of the sick, the naked, the hungry, the thirsty…
But now I want to be.
Now I know I must be.
Now I know that the rich love lavished on my being every day has got to be shared with as many as often as possible.
And you can’t tell people about Jesus’ love until they’ve experienced some human love first.
You’ve got to care for their physical needs and give them a tiny taste of what sacrificial love looks like before you tell them of the infinite love of the sacrificial Lamb.
Great! But what the heck does this mean for my life?
I have no idea how it’s all supposed to look.
But I’m not worried about that.
I’m worried about doing what God has shown me today.
And that is:
- I am called first and foremost to my husband—to live sacrificially in my marriage.If you have read any of my other posts from the past, you know that marriage has been the hardest thing I have ever done, being married, so for me this is no “small” call.I also fail at this daily, and this is where I am learning more and more about God’s heart, in ever and continually increasing measure.
- I am called to Dallas, Texas—not Lima, Peru (though I left my heart in Peru when I visited it in high school and college :)), not Uganda, not Ethiopia, not even to France or Italy (though Austin and I considered moving there two and a half years ago…all doors closed).I am not just “called” here because I live here; I am called here because I truly LOVE this City.I want to see it thrive.It is a place that I would love to serve for the rest of my days (by the way, this is how Katie feels about Uganda—she is home there, as though she was made for the place).
- God has put on my heart to begin to pray for the poorest zip code in Dallas, and not really for the zip code, but for the people who live there.
75210
And so I have started praying for them.
I’m not really sure anything beyond that right now.
I believe that I am commanded to care for the orphans and widows and poor and those in prison.
I am commanded to care for the least of these and the lost.
I am sure that I am not doing that, at least not in any substantial way.
It is not the song of my life, and I would like it to be.
So I am on a journey (and this blog will now be about this journey) to discover what it would mean to really do what God has asked of me—not in Uganda or Bermuda or Greece, but in Dallas, Texas, the city in which I was born and the place I now live.
What would it mean to begin—just begin—merely begin—to live this way?
I have no idea.
But, with God’s help, I’d like to try.
Also, if you’re bored with my feeble attempts, you won’t be bored with Katie’s.
Read about someone who is living it out here.