Reflections on Workcamp #4 – Jordan Trautwein

Continuing our recap of Workcamp, Jordan Trautwein shares some of the things God showed her through our week of service and worship.  ENJOY!

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This Workcamp, I learned to appreciate tools.  When my crew first arrived at our worksite, we had a plethora of hedges to cut but no hedge clippers.  It was a huge part of our project and several other tasks depended on it’s completion.  We would have loved to get started, but we couldn’t until we had the right tools.

As the “chosen people of God” we are called to allow God to do His work through us.  In other words, we are need to be used as tools.  We are meant to be used and worn out and chipped and bumped and bruised and broken.  But as we are employed by God, we are not meant to stay that way.  This week’s theme verse, Revelation 21:5 says, “Look, I am making everything new!”  So we are going to be made new.  New patience. New wisdom. New love for each other. New strength. All so we can be used and worn out and chipped and bumped and bruised all over again.

Somewhere in my maze of a brain I think I’ve known all along that I should be serving God more than just the occasional acolyting service, but it has mostly been in recent years that the questions “HOW?” has been bugging me.  How can God use ME to get done what He wants to have accomplished?  But this week I was again reminded that a hammer doesn’t need to know how to build a porch. It just needs to be willing to be used. (Obviously this is far easier for a hammer, seems as if it is an inanimate object, and is therefore not nearly as unruly or stubborn as I tend to be. But personification is important for the metaphor.)

I don’t need to know how to change the world,or how to build a porch. I just need to be willing to be used by God.

I need to trust that I will be made new, even if I don’t see it at first. I need to let myself find that out.