No I didn't know...

I love the drive up to Ballarat that we do every Thursday. It's a good time to just hang out with Matt and Jono, to pray for everything going on, and (when I'm not the one driving) to just sit back and take in all the beauty that this place has to offer. It's getting especially beautiful now sine it's fall here, so the leaves are changing into beautiful shades of red, orange, and yellow, and the fields get greener and greener everyday. Don't get the idea that I'm driving along the Great Ocean Road once a week, cuz I'm not... going to Ballarat we are actually getting further away from the ocean. It's nothing but country and wide open spaces, and it's next to impossible to count all the horses and sheep that we pass. It's quite different than Southern California, and not the kind of scenery that I'm used to... a comparable length of the drive would be SB to LA, but not the same at all! No 6 lane-highways with massive SUVS doing 85, mainly just a 2-lane road doing about a 100 k's, which is about 60 mph. Much more low-key and truly Aussie :)

This week we passed a house that had a MASSIVE banner in their front yard. The first line read "DID YOU KNOW?" I was intrigued, wondering what this house wanted to so clearly present to its neighbors and everyone that passed by. My mind began to come up with lots of possibilities that this house wanted me to know, some ideas a bit more ridiculous than others. As we got closer, you could read the second line that, in smaller print, said "that Buninyong has 2 bars..." (Buninyong is the tiny little town that you hit before you get to Ballarat, and when I say tiny, I mean tiny) My first reaction was complete surprise that such a small town would in fact have 2 bars in it. When I got done wondering where the bars actually were, the implications of what I just saw began to hit me. I thought about all the time and effort that went into making the banner, the money that was spent to get it produced, and the dangers, and possible accidents, that occurred while hanging it from their second story balcony. It made me sad to think about the fact that all this time, effort, money, energy, labor, etc went into letting people know about these two bars. This banner was sending quite a message about the people that lived in this house and what's important to them, and it broke my heart to think that this is what so many people are living for, and think it is worthy of their lives.

I know what it means to pour time, effort and energy into something; I pour so much into this ministry everyday, and, if I'm honest, it's exhausting and, at times, it can drain me like nothing else can. But I come home everyday knowing that I am working for something greater, something more worthy than I can probably ever comprehend. This banner advertising these bars doesn't have that promise attached to it, for all they know they could put up that banner and not a single person could show up to these bars (which is probably the reality because it didn't actually say where these bars were... poor advertising if you ask me). It broke my heart to see first hand that these people thought this message was worth pouring into, and even spreading to others, and made me all the more grateful that the message I'm "advertising" is one of redemption and hope. Thank. You. Jesus.

For the only message that's worth spreading,
Michelle