Living abroad is the dream for any adventurous soul. There is foreign beauty all around that demands to be seen, captured, responded to. My challenge is distraction. My heart beats full of ambition, ideas, possibilities. Here in Paris, the war for my attention heightens. What am I saying? I find it easy to become distracted by all that is here, rather than create space to worship the Creator for all he has created.

My journal is full of the Lord calling me back to him. “My heart has heard you say, ‘Come and talk with me.’ And my heart responds, ‘Lord, I am coming.’” Psalm 27:8. The things that compete for my heart are buying new clothes, buying souvenirs, taking lots of photographs, posting on instagram. The Lord would ask me, “Where is your heart?” and my journal is full of scripture like Mark 7:6, “This people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me” and Romans 1:21 “for although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile.”

My heart is full of this tension between the emptiness required to receive the Lord, and the constant ambition and desire to live this time in Paris to its fullest (by the world’s standards) with the glory of materialism and aesthetic instagram feeds. I think this trip has emphasized the need to create a sanctuary for the Lord in your life and to guard this time fiercely. I felt the Lord speak to me the beginning of the semester that he will fill anything I place before him. He will fill my journal with His words and insight if I set it before him. He will fill my mind with creativity if I set it before him. He will fill my heart with peace if I set it before him,

“the complacency of fools destroys them. But whoever listens to me dwells secure,” Proverbs 1:32.

The Lord simply places a choice before me. To choose the beautiful King or to choose the “beauty” of this world. To gain the world and lose my soul? I can only thank him for rescuing me over and over…