God Can Use You Where You Are: The Dangerous Romance of Elsewhere
“Nazareth!” exclaimed Nathanael. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
“Come and see for yourself,” Philip replied.
“What if I just…quit my job, and this was our life?”
Isn’t that the thought in every traveler’s mind trekking new soil? Lulled by the narcotic sea breeze, or wiping the dust from a new sneaker— it’s easy to get lost in the romance of a constantly moving life.
I cannot relate how many times I have escaped my norm and temporarily fallen under the spell of wanderlust. “If I didn’t work a desk job, we could travel more as a family.” “I could become a travel writer, study new places and wrap them in stories.” Dreams and visions ring in my head, mostly fantasy, but laced with just enough truth to be dangerous.
It’s as if I am convinced that God’s purpose for my life is hiding from me, crawling with the tarantulas in Haiti or swirling whispers in a cove off the Amalfi Coast. If I could just find her, trade my suitcase for a foreign armoire, she might reveal herself to me— baptize me in the waters I have always thirsted for: There you are. Found, at last.
Why does it always seem that greatness is elusive?
That it lives anywhere other than where we live?
“Nothing ever happens, around here.” Our hometown is an overplayed song on the radio, a joke told enough times to lose its humor. Adventure is out there, never right here.
I wonder if the apostles ever felt that way (pre-ministry)? Did Peter resent the drone of the Bethsaida fishing market? Was Capernaum the shiny next-door-neighbor, the trade-up along the path of broader ambitions?
Is it simply human nature to reject the familiar and discount it as cheap goods?
What if God brought you to your mundane with His greater mission in mind?
Peter and Andrew lived in Capernaum, to be fishermen. Matthew was stationed there in his tenure of tax collecting. When the right people are in the right, unremarkable positions and places, and Jesus shows up, and God’s purpose unfolds. God pre-established these men in the same corner of their world at this intersecting time in history, specifically for Jesus to call, train, and change the world with them.
Here’s what we know about commonplace Capernaum: It is mentioned 16 times in the gospel, and associated with at least nine recorded miracles.
Here, Jesus called the disciples working on the Sea of Galilee.
Here, he sent them and walked on water to reach them.
Here, he exorcised evil and healed lifelong disorders.
Here, He fed the 5,000 and brought the dead to life.
He made marvels of the mundane, and ministry of their monotony. The apostles just didn’t see it coming.
In my life, I have noticed a return from vacation eventually overcomes the post-trip grief with a warm blanket of ritual. I make my lists (and check them twice), fall back into the comfort of routine, and the general sense of belonging seeps slowly into my bones, a reckoning of sorts.
The spell is broken, and I find everyday reasons to be grateful for the life I lead, destined to it, in fact.
If God’s purpose for my life is some grand adventure I’m not privy to, at least He holds the plans. He can form significance from my stomping ground, or else, He can move me where He needs me— maybe to someone else’s boring old hometown.
Of one thing, I am confident— wherever He is, there is the extraordinary.
