Soaking in Fall

 
 I opened our back door and was greeted with cool, refreshing night air. I stepped out to shake the table cloth free of crumbs from supper and drew a deep breath. Drying leaves scented the fall air and I wanted somehow to bottle it. To soak it in! To hold on to it and pull it out next year when we are living in Ghana and I am homesick.

A quiet evening fishing.

   I find myself doing that many times these days. Trying to soak up my surroundings like a sponge. So I can squeeze them out and look them over some day in the future; when I am far away from everything familiar. We had revival meetings this past week and we soaked up the teaching and came away revived. But as I sat in the midst of our church family, part of me wanted to weep because I know I will be leaving it soon. And I know just how far Africa is from Pennsylvania.

   There is one thing that comforts me though. Even though we will be far from friends and family, God will be just as close as He always has been. We will have new friends and a new church family. And most importantly, we will be living in the center of God's will for our lives. And although we are on a different continent, we are just a prayer away from those we love.

A fall sunset on our way to church.

A few things that we were blessed and challenged with the past week;

 If we are living in the center of God's will we don't need to pray for God's blessing on our lives. We already have that. We just need to pray for strength and courage to do the work He has called us to. 

If we claim to be a Christian, we are a witness for Christ, whether we want to be or not.

We do not need to save the souls of the people around us. That is Christ's job. We need to point them to Christ and then get out of the way.