I wake up almost every day freaking out. With new things on the horizon (with new things right in front of me), it is way too easy to be overwhelmed and unsure.

Therefore, every morning I spend considerable time quieting my heart and mind, praying, meditating, journaling, until my center has been reestablished in the character of God rather than my own immediate realities.

I’ve learned to not move until there is peace.

In less than eight weeks I will be in Uganda once more. And though there are many things about this trip that I do not know about, details not yet fallen into place, provision still to come, I’ve learned that peace comes in the character of God, and not in my own immediate realities or understanding.

None of this is about you or I. And I wonder sometimes if we really get this.

Though our lives feel ultimately personal, when our lives are intersected by the spirit of God we simply become the canvas for God’s painting.

It’s really not about us.

Simply the conduit by which God is translated to the world, our lives take a back seat. My own freaking out places are simply my humanity that has trouble seeing the bigger picture, trouble seeing past myself.

Freaking out is simply ‘myself’ in the midst of the picture. I’ve got to remember, I am the canvas, God is the artist. Period.

Are we given over to God?

Given over to God is the ultimate opportunity and adventure. While everyone’s experience and specifics are as numerous and different as the sands on the seashore, ‘our lives given over as a canvas’ is there for everyone.

It is in fact the call of the gospel and the invitation of Jesus Christ.

This world has gone bad. We can all agree to that. With illness and atrocity, chronic discouragements to trauma (and this is the short list), life certainly is not what its all cracked up to be.

Things have gone horribly wrong.

Spiritually blinded by the fracture between ourselves and God, Jesus came onto the scene to give us back our eyesight (Thank-You Jesus). That ability to see and know things beyond our knowing, to access wisdom beyond our own smarts, and to have the finger of God sweep through our days leaves whisps of godly presence behind.

Good presence, honorable presence, right presence.

And in that presence of God we are invited to join in on setting things right in the world. The redemption of all that has gone wrong (while completed on the cross) is brought into our realities as a continual present tense happening that you and I can partake of, enter into, and move forward through our own involvement.

We come to ask, “What is on your heart God? How might I make happen today what is important to you?”

And the world begins to be set right. Bit by bit, little by little, the lost land taken back, things set straight.

The message of “God so loved the world”, doesn’t end with you and I, it is in fact an invitation,

“Will you love the world alongside me? You and I together.”

We are all better together.

Freaking out is simply us in the middle of the picture. But Us doesn’t have to stay there. Us in the middle of the picture makes for pretty small perspective and shortened eyesight.

God in the middle of the picture is the great exchange.

“My own eyesight is pretty narrow God, I’d like your eyesight please. My own life is overwhelming and nerve wracking, I’d like to live through your life God. My own perspectives are small, I’d like to move and have my being through your perspectives God.”

We simply give over our humanity for an understanding of and relationship with God and his glory and love and presence poured out on this earth.

And we don’t have to freak out any more.