Filled to Be Emptied

I was looking through my old journals and read a post from March of this year. I'd been in Greece a month. It caught my eye because it mentions something I'd been talking about with a friend about half an hour ago. She'd asked me what some of my goals were, what I want to do, and we got to talking about justice issues like abortion and human trafficking and the poverty in the world, both physically and spiritually. We talked about our trips to Russia and India, how things seen there just broke our hearts. I talked about how I don't understand why I am safe in a free country, blessed beyond belief, in an amazing house with a loving family (we have our issues, but who doesn't?). I made it into this world without being aborted. I was never abused. I was never sold to a brothel at age 8. Why me, here, and why them, there, and in those situations?

This is what I'd written in March:

I know you hold the world in your hands and that you have determined the times and places where we should live. I just don't understand why I have this life and they have that one. Why have you blessed me so tremendously? These thoughts are tearing me up. How would you have me spend my time on this earth? I want to help and to bless those who need help. "I know I'm filled to be emptied again / this seed I've received I will sow" -- Desert Song, Hillsong.

The only answer I can think of for why I'm here, with this life, and not there, with that life, is because I'm meant to help in some way, to show the love I've been shown, to give what I've been given. And this doesn't necessarily mean I'm supposed to go to other countries. America is a place of darkness just like the rest of the world, a place desperately in need of the pure and transforming love of God.

My prayer is that I can take every blessing I've received and pour it back out as an offering to the Lord that really counts, that really moves his heart. And people are on his heart. The oppressed and brokenhearted are on his heart.

We have nothing that has not been given to us. I hope this encourages you to take inventory of what you've been blessed with and to seek God's heart on how you can use it to bless someone else.