LakeTiticaca

Today was the day that Jason and I went to tour Lake Titicaca, which is on the border of Bolivia and Peru.  There iare a couple of things that you should know before I continue with this post.  First, Lake Titicaca is the highest navegable lake in the world (meaning that it is used for shipping products and has port cities) at a whopping 12,500 feet.  It is also the legendary birth place of the original Inca, and it contains just under a hundred floating islands made by the indigenous people.  All in all a pretty cool place!

Needless to say I was pretty excited to finally get to see it, but then some wrenches were thrown into the mix.  Last night when I went to bed, I was feeling pretty drained and thought it was just being tired from the amount of walking we had done that day, combined with the high altitude, but when I woke up in the middle of the night with a throbbing headache, weakness, more cold than usual, a fast heart beat, and nausea, I realized that I was suffering not from your general, run of the mill fatigue, but high altitude sickness (known here as soroche).  I tried sleeping it off because the next morning at 6:45 am, Jason and I had already paid for our tour on the lake and I would only be able to get half of the cost back if I couldn´t go.  6:00 am rolled around and still didn´t feel better.  I knew from my years of backpacking experience that once you have high altitude sickness the last thing you want to do is try to "push through it" because that can make it way worse!  So I told Jason to have fun and take lots of pictures for me, while I holed up in bed with a jacket and tea by my side.  I was pretty bummed, but more importantly I just wanted to feel better.  Around 11:30 am I finally decided that I was done with my bed and made my way down stairs with a book to sit in the lobby and get some tea.  Although it doesn´t sound like things were going very well for me, it was actually at that point that I had one of my highlights of the day.

The book I had brought down with me is called Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  I had read it once before, but I wanted to take more time to really think about it in depth.  So I started reading, doubtful of whether it would last very long, because reading is one of those things that is the last thing someone wants to do when there sick.  At least its that way for me. Anyway, the premise of the book is how God´s love for us is crazy, and that we should live our lives in response to that lavishing love that He shows each of us.  This time when I started reading, I rediscovered some very powerful points that I know I am prone to forget. Francis Chan started off the chapter with a quote from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 13 verse 44.  Here is what it said:

"The kindom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.  When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field."

Although I had heard it many times before, that verse struck me.  Do I seek Jesus and his life plans for me like that?  Am I willing to set everything else aside for Him? I continued reading, meditating on those questions, which I absolutely wanted to say yes to, because I know that God´s plans and life with Jesus at the wheel is so much better than my way, but I had to look at my life and see if my actions backed that up.  The chapter then continued to talk more in depth about how Jesus isn´t looking for halfhearted people to follow Him, but rather people who are willing to go all in. A couple of other verses jumped out at me later:

Luke 9:23
"The he said to them all: 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.'"

Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone who says to me,'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."

Its not that Francis Chan was saying that we are saved by doing good things, we aren´t, but these Bible verses do show that God is looking for people who are serious about Him.  We all fail, that is to be sure, but the difference is that we get back up and keep following Him even after failure.  This last semester, I definitely found myself taking my own route over God´s.  They weren´t necessarily all in "bad" things either... such as Netflix, but I knew that I was prioritizing things in a way that didn´t always have God as number one. I never cease to be amazed how God is so good at grabbing our attention in unexpected ways.  So basically what I found today was that God used my high altitude sickness to get my attention, and as weird as it sounds I am thankful that.  Later in the day, my altitude sickness got a lot better, and I was actually able to make it out the floating islands (such an awesome experience). Thus in the end I still got to do most of what I had been looking forward to doing, it was just in a different order than I though. So anyway, that was a big thing that happened to me today and just wanted to share with you guy

Tomorrow I am heading out to Chile and will have very limited internet access, but will post again when I get the chance.  Till next time!