living fully alive

I'm visiting friends in the upstate this weekend to start off the new year. we've had some great times over the past couple day, but one thing I always look forward to on my weekends up here is going to church at a place down town called Radius. It's a small branch of a church based out of Columbia and it is amazing. It's in an old, run down, cathedral-type church and is made up of mostly college age kids and young adults. The teacher there is named Stuart, along with his wife, Gretchen, and their two daughters. He is one of the most amazing speakers I've ever heard. I'm sad I don't live up this way because I absolutely love to hear what he has to say about the Bible and God and just life in general.
Tonight, though, he spoke of his recent trip to Israel. He showed pictures from a cliff side they had visited that was believed to be the nearest cliff to Nazareth that had Limestone in it, meaning that it was probably where Jesus, along with Joseph, had many times come to gather stone for supplies and for carving [recent scholars believe that Joseph was a stone maker, as well as a carpenter]. It was a powerful thing to see. He also showed pictures of Herod's palace and explained the way it was built.
The thing, however, that he settled to teach on was the temple of God and how we fit into our places in the kingdom. Back then, when you built very large structures, like a palace, you had to use lime stones of different shapes and sizes and place them all in different directions, pointing this way and that, three small ones on top of a big one, and so on, because it would stand the weight better. He focused on the verse that says we are the temple of God and Jesus is our Cornerstone. And in conclusion, he summed that we ourselves are not individual temples, like has been referenced many time in the past, even to me, by other pastors and elders, but we are each one of those stones, being different shapes, sizes, having different battle scars and having been chiseled out on the side of a mountain differently than anyone else. He also stressed how vital we are to the structure of the temple. God made each of us to fit in a certain space on the side of His temple, and when we don't follow Him and let Him mold us into the shape he needs us, we will not fit into our place.
I've been thinking a lot tonight about my desires to be in Africa right now. And one thing that's always been a problem for me is the people in America who seem to not even care about the people who are starving in other countries, the people who are lost, the children who will not grow up with strong parental role models because they're dead, or don't care. This had always plagued my thoughts, but now I realize that, though my best friend, Katherine, has no other desire than to meet someone, start a family and be an American Housewife for the rest of her life, and the fact that my brother wants to start a career early so he can retire early and spend his days fishing in the bay...in the same town we live in now, or that my other good friend wants to go through five years of college just to turn around and teach it to other people, that doesn't mean they're on the wrong track. Their stone is chiseled differently than mine. This knowledge has been with me for years. I know everyone in the world shouldn't be in another country, living in an orphanage or sleeping in a mud hut, and I know that people support me in my aspirations, but it seemed tonight, when he said it that way, it clarified a bit more. And it gave me more peace about my direction. That's what I need right now. I'm thankful.