Читать книгу I'm Out to Change My World - Ann Kiemel - Страница 11

ordinary days

something beautiful

something good

all my confusion, He understood

all i had to offer Him,

was brokenness and strife

but He’s making something beautiful

out of my life.

sometimes people say,

“ann, i want to speak like you.

i want to do like you.

i want to be a dean of women at a college

what do i do to be like you?”

and i look back over my life

and i remember being that little girl

with my father on long walks

and him saying to me,

“remember just this...

it pays.

it pays to serve Jesus.”

i grew up in hawaii

don’t tell me what prejudice is.

i know.

i was one light face in the middle

of several thousand dark faces on my campus.

i cannot remember one night in my junior high years

that i did not cry myself to sleep

and wonder why my face couldn’t be dark, too.

i wondered why hindus and buddhists

had to laugh at my God.

i wondered why friends laughed behind my back

because i was a foreigner.

and all through my junior high years,

i kept saying,

“daddy, why does it pay to serve Jesus?”

and my father would say,

“hang in there.

it pays.”

and so many mornings, i’d say,

“mom, i don’t want to go to school today.”

and she’d push me out the door

with my brother and sister and say,

“don’t you kids know

that life is made up of ordinary days

when there’s no one to pat you on the back?

when there is no one to praise you?

when there’s no one to honor you?

when there’s no one to see how brave and noble you are?

almost all of life is made up of ordinary days

and it’s how you live your ordinary days

that determines whether or not you have big moments.

get out there

and make something of your ordinary days.”

and i’d stumble out the door in tears.

And I still remember the last day in my large high school.

my sister and i were on the platform to receive little awards

but a lot of kids could make a’s.

and we were getting scholarships

but whoever heard of northwest nazarene college?

and when they would make the announcements,

the students would give slight applause

and they would go on

and then the principal called jan and me.

he said,

“we’re hindus and buddhists,

but these two girls came

and brought their God to our campus

they’ve changed our world.”

and i can only remember the applause

and that it never seemed to end.

i was speechless.

i can remember the tears dripping off my chin,

inside i was whispering

“daddy you were right.

through the thousands of ordinary days

when i wanted to give up, it paid.

it pays to be true.

it pays to follow Jesus.”

and i went to college

and faced good days and ordinary days

but when i was a junior,

it came to me.

“ann, either you are going to follow

Jesus Christ to the end

or not follow Him at all.”

after all,

i was an honor student.

i was becoming somebody on campus.

i had big dreams.

i had high hopes.

follow Jesus to the end?

what if i never had a dream come true?

what if nothing special ever happened?

nothing i ever loved ever came my way?

would i follow Jesus to the end,

if everything i loved was taken away?

would i make that kind of decision to follow?

for you it might have been an easy decision.

for me it was six long months—

ugly months—

of struggle.

“Jesus, how can i?”

‘til i remember kneeling by the couch

in the tv room

and piling into my hands all that i loved

and knowing what it meant for the first time,

“yes, Lord, from now to the end i will follow you.”

yes, Lord

to anything

anytime, anywhere.

yes, Lord—if you’ll go with me.

that was really the turning point in my life.

i chose on my own

to follow Jesus to the end.

i don’t know what it will mean to follow to the end.

i have a feeling it’s a long road,