Pol Pot and Me: My year of living dangerously
I lead a fairly large and innovative ministry. It didn’t start in 1989 when we got our incorporation papers. If you look back in time, maybe it started ten years earlier, when I decided to start living dangerously.
In 1979, as a senior in college I knew there had to be a great cause somewhere and in the dying nation of Cambodia I found it. Pol Pot was killing off his country. Two million of them before it was over. Cambodia was being put to the knife. The genocide was spilling onto the national press. I knew that was it.
At 21 years of age I learned that greatness depended on serving a great cause. I knew that whatever greatness was in me wasn’t about me. I didn’t know anything about the Great Commission, but I heard the screams of a dying nation and so I signed up with a relief agency called Food for the Hungry to go help.
The problem was my reputation as a rabble rouser in college preceded me. Food for the Hungry must have gotten wind of that – after considering my application, they turned me down and said, “Maybe next time.” Have you ever had your dream squashed like that? I couldn’t believe it.
I pleaded with God to let me go. “It doesn’t matter about my girlfriend or my buddies that I’ll be leaving. It doesn’t matter about what people said I couldn’t do. Just get me on that plane.” I had a conviction, a knowing, deep inside that said, “You were made for this great cause; there’s an ember down inside of you that will be fanned into flame there.”
And at the last second, the Food for the Hungry people called me up and said, “OK, we’ve got a ticket for you, you can go.” More obstacles arose, reasons why this dream of mine was crazy. But I tenaciously hung on and God kept opening the doors.
Soon, I was on a 747 for Thailand and shipped off to a refugee camp where I was in charge of a pig- and chicken-raising project. Of course I knew nothing about how to help refugees and knew nothing about pigs and chickens except how to cook and eat them.
Here is what I learned: I was not a mistake or a cosmic blip. And I was not born for comfort and a cubicle. I was made to hitch my life to a great cause. God made us, his children, to be great. I’m not talking about the self-exalting greatness that we see in the media. I’m talking about the greatness of God matching up your unique passions and talents with his kingdom-building project.
I had been told what I couldn’t do all my life. That’s why I rebelled. I was going to thumb my nose at an establishment that wanted to keep me, in the immortal words of Pink Floyd, “comfortably numb.”
And as messy a start as it was, as immature and rebellious as I may have been, I learned this lesson: Don’t despise small beginnings. Whatever your dream, wherever you are today, begin there.
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Thanks for this post. Don’t despise small beginnings. That ministered to me. I am starting where I am planted and we’ll see where it goes.
thanks papa. love and miss you!
kind of been waiting around for this one 🙂
thanks. really.
“I was made to hitch my life to a great cause. God made us, his children, to be great … the greatness of God matching up your unique passions and talents with his kingdom-building project.”
this greatness …. this is what i’m ready for. or WANT to be ready for.
thanks for the encouragement. small beginnings. as much as i hate em, i’ll start there. 🙂
love.
Thanks for this post, Seth. It is a great reminder for me…something that slaps me upside the head and says, “Remember, I called you for greatness. Circumstances may have changed, but My plans for you have not.”
well received!
Thanks Seth for a good reminder blog. 🙂