The salary is unsustainable. What about your college loans? The transportation is grueling. What will you do spending 2 hrs in the train every day? The location was dangerous. Will you put yourself there again? The job will put me further behind for grad school plans. When will you go back?
Now that I look back, it was the most senseless yet rewarding place God led me to.
The salary is enough. I can cut back and cook more dinners (for friends&family). The transportation is a blessing. Spending 2 hrs on the train impresses upon me each morning that the economic gap is glaring and that I need to go where people don't want to. The location was surrounded by God. He placed such good people in my life to befriend in this community. The job has only given me a greater desire for grad school and the trajectory that I need to take. I will apply when the Lord tells me to.
Even further, He has allowed me to support the very same teachers with whom I've worked alongside in Philadelphia, develop relationships between school admin/teachers/students/volunteers/nonprofits, befriend a local church that is deeply committed to engage with and serve the community, connect my own church to community outreach, and gain experience in nonprofits that could help others.
I'm reminded that sometimes the most impractical move in the worldly sense leads to the greatest blessing in the gospel sense. Why? Because God is radical and He works in radical ways.
“Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It's the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too. ” ― Frederick Buechner
Lately I hunger for more compassion. For those in my youth group who are burdened by the pressures in a teenage world and are buckling under parental expectations. For those in the under-resourced public schools who are economically disadvantaged and show up to school either tired and/or hungry. For those overseas who are suffering at the hands of injustice and constantly running from nightmarish terror and relentless heartache.
Like a close sister had shared with me, I must not let physical needs deter me from seeing the true spiritual need of Jesus that these people all share. It is not for clothing nor is it for food. The deepest hunger dwelling in each of them is the hunger to know a Savior who created and loves them.
And to serve, I must hunger for and eat more.
"I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing" -John 15:5
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" -John 16:33
