Rosen Journey

When Karin and I got married in 1998 we didn’t have a lot.  Before our wedding Karin moved to town and lived with her parents and I left my apartment and moved home as well.  Our purpose was to save money so that we could buy the first furnishings for our married life together.  Karin saved up for our couch and love seat while I bought our oak bedroom set.  The two bedroom apartment we moved into after our wedding barely fit all of this furniture in it.  Over our 27 years of marriage these furnishings have become a key fixture in our lives.  The couches in particular became the centerpiece for so much life that we’ve lived together especially with raising and now releasing our two boys Caleb & Joshua.  I’m sitting on the couch as I write and there are literally holes worn in the cushions.  The holes do not reflect poor quality, instead they represent a lot of life that is now behind us.  When the boys were little I would take the back pillows off and pretend like they were slices of bread, then I would put the boys between the pillows and call it a “Caleb and Joshua Sandwich.”  They loved it!  

Now here we are getting ready to sell all of that furniture.  Not because they are out of style and well worn, but because God is sending us on a new mission in this next season of our lives.  Over the last year and a half we have sensed God asking us to serve overseas in His global work.  Through much prayer and exploration we have decided to join Mercy Ships, a faith based humanitarian organization that provides free life changing surgeries in Sub-Saharan West Africa.  Their mission in following the 2,000 year old model of Jesus is, “to provide hope and healing to the world’s forgotten poor.”  Over the next month our task is to consolidate everything we’ve accumulated through the years into a 10’ by 20’ storage unit plus the five suitcases we will take to the ship.  

As painful and time consuming as this downsizing might be, Karin and I have determined that it is a healthy process.  How is it that over the years we have accumulated so much stuff and do we really need it all?  Of course the answer to this is “no, we don’t need it all.”  We are prone to acquire and accumulate, maybe you are too.  But as we read scripture we see that Jesus encouraged the opposite approach.  In Mark 6:8 Jesus begins to send the disciples out two by two to do ministry and here’s what He said, “Take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.”  The very fact that Jesus told them not to take these things is proof that they did have them to take.  So why did He tell them to take nothing?

First, I believe he asked them to “travel light” so they could be nimble and always prepared to go where the Spirit of God would lead them next.  Second, God had people in all the towns where they would go and He wanted them to join the work by supporting the disciples personally.  Lastly, Jesus was teaching the disciples to leave the life of the comfortable and to be fully dependent upon God.

So as Karin and I sell off many of our possessions, Jesus’ call to “take nothing” is resonating in our hearts.  We know it won’t be easy, but obviously that’s not the point. Our prayer is that because of our willingness to “travel light,” people in Africa will experience the hope of Jesus through the healing provided by His people.  Thanks for joining us on this journey, we hope you are inspired to take a journey of your own.