The 2-year mark is coming up quick, and has already hit in some respects. Two years on STINT. Two years living in Croatia. Two years since graduation. Two years spent trying to pioneer a ministry in Rijeka. Two years away from home. Two years figuring out that this is actually home now. Some of the most difficult, challenging years of my life. And some of the most rewarding.
In many ways, two years isn’t very long. When I think about most 2-year-olds I’ve known, terms like ‘mature’, ‘complete’, and ‘finished product’ never come to mind. The sophomore year in college, the second year of marriage, the second season of basketball… None of those are real milestones.
But that is all the time I was given here. And it was the time that I gave. Was the price too high? Was the return too little? Did it matter? And if it did, why? And to whom? Those answers will probably never be fully given and the relative costs and benefits simply can’t be measured. But I speculate anyway. I know I failed in many ways, and grew in many as well.
Sooner, more so than later, I will return home. To what and for what I don’t know so well anymore. I only pray that what I leave behind will have been built on Christ, and that it will have been done in such a way as to last.
Come Thou fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above
Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it
Mount of Thy unchanging love
Here I raise my Ebenezer
Hither by Thy help I’ve come
And I hope by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wand’ring from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood
Oh, to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be
Let that grace now like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, oh take and seal it
Seal it for thy courts above
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