Realignment

I remember back when I owned a car, I had to get the tires changed and I was asked if I wanted to have them aligned. Honestly because I'm rather on the clueless side when it comes to auto mechanics, I have no idea why tires need to be aligned or realigned or how they get out of alignment, but the term fits my life at the moment.

I feel like the past few weeks I have been undergoing realignment. As is usually true in life thing like this take a lot longer in humans than they do in cars.

So what do I mean by realignment? I mean that somewhere along the past few years my life has gotten out of alignment. Although I'm still running in the right direction, I'm no longer running in sync with God. I'm still following him yes, but certain things have turned me slightly off the path making it more difficult for me to stay on it. As I understand out of alignment and realignment – the tires on a car while still going in the same general direction that the car should be going aren't quite running a straight path, aren't quite all pointing in the exact same direction. That is how I feel I've been. I'm just been missing something. It not that I'm not a Christian or even that I'm not living the Christian Life, its that because I'm out of alignment its been that much harder to live the Christian Life.

I believe that the entire Christian Life is an exercise in realignment – we are taken from this world and slowly God moves us into perfect alignment with His Kingdom. Yet I also believe that there are times when the realignment exercise is more vigorous and pronounced. I've been going through one of these times.

I'm not quite sure when I should say that it started because it moved from the subtle to the obvious without my acknowledgment. For sure I can say that it had begun by the time we started Msafara. For sure I can say the first obvious movement in my life towards correct alignment came on the trip from Mombasa to Nairobi. The conversations I engaged in jolted me probably not into alignment but definitely from the position of out of alignment I had been in for a few years. That conversation was just the beginning, conversations, sermons, things I've been reading in the Bible and otherwise, thought processes, circumstances are a few of the things God has been using to get me realigned.

What will realignment look like in my life? I'm not entirely sure. A few possibilities include writing more but caring less about where that writing in published; writing more about specific things and less about just anything; learning to say NO more often; caring less what others think about me and much more what GOD thinks about me; caring more about relationships with others yet depending less on those relationships; planning less and living more freely and spontaneously. Those are a few general things that I believe God has been realigning me towards. One specific thing is the idea to start writing clubs in impoverished areas like Kibera slums. I believe that writing, photography, videography, art, music and the like can be used to help these young people cope with and possibly even change their surroundings. Of course in some ways this comes out of the school visit I did on Friday but it has been in my heart for longer than that – it was definitely one of the areas where I was out of alignment.