A snapshot of my life right now:
My team is upstairs; Bryan is messing around on his accoustic guitar, playing some Jack Johnson song, and occasionally whooping loud enough for me to hear from downstairs. Someone's singing and someone else is snapping their fingers. Most of our Romanian family are outside working on the pig pen, except for Sanda and Laura who are playing with their children on the bed as Beni (a little five year old boy) repeats, "Google-y goo! Google-y goo!" We've just got back from playing with a group of very poor gypsy children and the day is winding down.
In a week's time from now this picture will be impossible to recreate as we will be going home. "Going home." It sounds so odd in my mouth when I say it aloud. How can you go home when you're already there?
Jesus taught a lot about not biological families, but families solely united in the Lord and His will. I, as a Christian, am in the body of Christ. But no one has ever demonstrated to me what that is as well as the Romanian people have. The first thing Abi (he owns the house I'm staying at) said to me was, "I'm Abi. But you can call me papa! I will be your Romanian father." Every time he sees me, he hugs me and says, "My beautiful girl!" The openness and incredible loving servant heart our two families have shown all of us has floored me. They have put my needs above their own, they offer me their finest, and they serve me unbegrudgingly. It's the family of Christ perfectly painted.
Romania is my home because this is my family in Christ's home. But America is, too; and my own family waits or me there. That's how God means it to be, though, right? Because of His love, I have family members all over the world.
"That is why you are no longer foreigners and outsiders but citizens together with God's people and members of God's family." Ephesians 2:19
