"I am the Lord's servant"

Hey guys! Electa here. We are 10 days out from departing for Ghana! Our team has finished a semester of college, finished finals, finished team meetings, and yet everything is just beginning. As we head on our journey, here a reflection of what has been on my heart and how you can continue to pray for us.

Have you ever sat in a moment realizing that the next step you will take will have a significant impact on your life? You are about to enter into a new understanding of the world, a new understanding of yourself, a new understanding of God. This is how I am feeling now. The biting New England wind piles up snow drifts outside my dorm room window, and in two weeks I will be laughing and singing in 90 degree heat with strangers who will have quickly become friends. In this Advent season, I can’t help but think this is how Mary, the mother of Jesus, may have felt.

The Gospel of Luke tells the story of the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary to tell her she would give birth to a son. “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end” (Luke 1:31-33). In this moment Mary responds exactly as I feel: “How will this be?” (vs 34). How is it that God is going to do all of his glorious work through our team? How will it be that we will be standing with our brothers and sisters in Christ in Ghana in just a few short days? How will this ministry impact and shape the lives of the girls? Ourselves? In this moment, and on this trip, I am sure we will be like Mary: witnessing both heaven and earth, seeing the movements of a “kingdom that will never end.”

And in the moment of Mary’s realization, how does she respond?

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

This is a prayer for our team: that we may respond like Mary. When we are caught in between the beauty and pain of heaven and earth, when we witness the rebirth of girls as God’s daughters, when we are bewildered by the unknown of “how will this be?”, pray that we can trust “No word from God will ever fail” (Luke 1:37).

This semester, our team has taken many steps of obedience to prepare for the trip ahead. We have shared life stories, worshipped together, attended a Ghanaian church service, gone bowling (that’s what I call fundraising), stood hours in the cold raising money, spent time in prayer, even eaten a Ghanaian Jollof rice meal! Our next step is our biggest, and is truly going to be outside of our comfort zones! And yet our next step is also where we have been called to go. And just as the angel Gabriel said, the Lord is with us, and no word of his will ever fail. Thus,in our next step of obedience, please pray that we may respond as the Lord’s servants to whatever will be asked of us.