No Place to Lay.. Shower My Head

The last three weeks have been a trying time for my family.  We left Washington, the place we have lived for nearly our entire lives, packed up the house and the children, and said good bye to family and friends to head out on an adventure.  Our thought process was along the lines of “we are following God’s call on our lives.”

After weeks of packing and organizing, we were ready for the road trip where we would not have a house to take care of for a while, or any of the ordinary struggles in life.  We saw the country, well at least part of it, as we traveled through Washington, across the top of Idaho, through Montana, took a turn and went through Yellowstone National Park, continued through Wyoming, through South Dakota, and arrived at our final destination in beautiful Iowa.  This was over two weeks ago and we have been living at a campsite ever since.

Today I went to the gym.  I would love to say it was because I wanted a healthy body, but reality is I wanted a hot shower.  After two weeks of showering in cold water, I couldn’t handle it anymore.  I quickly was amazed at how down I had been over the last two weeks and how uplifting something as simple as a hot shower could be.  I have come to discover how much I love having a house with all comforts of having my own space and even the time I put into doing chores around the house.

As I stood in the oh so sweet shower today I had a huge appreciation Jesus!  Jesus chose to leave everything He had ever know, the way of living He had since before the beginning of time, even intimate connection with the Trinity that words do not adequately describe (scholars are still guessing at what this looks like).  Jesus truly humbled Himself and came to earth where for at least three years of His ministry He had no place to lay his head (Luke 9:58).  What took me back during my shower today was why Jesus choose to live the life of a nomad; Jesus came here to tell and show humanity the love that God has for us!

It is much easier to say we want to be like Jesus, it is much harder to live like Jesus who sacrificed everything, even His life, to show this world the Love that God freely gives to us.  I continue to be in awe of what Jesus did two thousand years ago, and even more in awe as to why He did it.  The exciting and scary part is that Jesus passed His ministry on  and now is in our hands, the Christians of today.  May we also be ready to live out our calling, hot shower or not, as Jesus did and continues to empower us to do.  When life is challenging and the shower is cold, may we all remember the life Jesus lived on earth and take encouragement that our strength comes from Him (Philippians 4:13).