What Will We Get Out of It?

"Then Peter said to him, 'We've given up everything to follow you.  What will we get out of it?"
 Matthew 19:27

Apparently, I've been asking the Lord this same question.  I didn't know I was, until He started answering it.  Inside the core of me, quietly sitting, waiting, watching, asking - this question has lived.  Secret things are always a surprise when they show themselves.  Through circumstances around me of watching friends walk through incredible grief and learning to pray as I've never done before, I began seeing surfaces of this question.  New dimensions coming into light when I tiptoed onto a territory that for so long I've had a lot of fear in - trusting the Lord that when I open my hear to love, He will hold my heart.  Again, this question becoming more loud and I becoming more aware of its existence inside of me.  

You see, the spaces in which the Lord takes us are not often where we first choose to go.  And its within the confines of a space that is uncomfortable, awkward and unfamiliar that I am forced to turn with full face to look to the One that brought me there.  Many times I would turn and not get a satisfying response as to why He brought me into this place.  Then this question lurking in the chambers of my belief system has finally awakened to show itself. I am beginning to realize, I really wasn't wanting to know why the Lord would bring me to these unfamiliar and strange places that I wouldn't have chosen to go on my own, but the earthquake question has always been, "What will I get out of it?"

In my world, I am all about me.  In the disciples world, Jesus was trying to bring them out of the burdensome yoke of living in a world that centered around them.  Peters asks this question - this question that is spilling over with unspoken emotion. The thing is, I don't actually live in my world. It has nothing to do with me.  I chose His Kingdom a long time ago. Its simply been the patience of the Father that He has allowed me to journey this place to finally begin to understand that the question I've been asking is near-sighted. With much grace, Jesus answers that heaven awaits us.  What more is there?

I've stopped for a rest on the journey. I am sitting on a bench, leaning down, plucking a blade of grass.  As I sit straight to look at this one blade of grass, I look past the green blade to see beyond it to the road that is still ahead of me.  I re-focus on the green blade.  Plucked from its life-giving source, it is without hope. It withers the longer I hold it. I continue to look at the blade.  Day becomes evening. That blade of grass holds nothing for me. If I choose to continue to focus on it, there is no hope for me in the end. It has nothing.  I look up again, past the withering blade to the road ahead.  Promise is beyond.  I put down the blade of grass. I still sit on the bench looking ahead.   I know that hope is beyond me - I choose to shift my focus beyond.

I couldn't tell you what will be met at the next leg of the journey.  Despair, rain, bears, sunshine...but I trust there will be more benches to sit and rest and wait.  I may not always walk as as quick as I'd like while journeying. I'd like to be there faster, but on this side of the journey, I am still human. As I stand up to start walking again, I ask the Father to bind to my heart the hope that He waits for me at the end.  The glorious end when I will finally see its always been about Him.