Dear Jesus,

I'd like to go soon.

Love, me.

One day, dear India, I will get my feet on your soil and my skin into your air. Perhaps very soon, perhaps not soon enough. Either way you can bet that my day dreams are frequently adventuring your streets, hills, jungles and shores (along with an accompanied and conveniently placed bollywood fan for those bollywood moments) alone with my God, hanging on His every word, but until then... Be patient with me. For I cannot wait until that moment I, from there, will write home and say, "Nothing could prepare you for this place in all its ancient complexities." All I'm waiting for is the way He's prepared.

It is so frustrating that we have such a propensity for fickleness. Not even a week ago I gladly and happily told my Lord that "Whatever is Your timing, I have no problem. I feel I have all the patience in the world. I could go now and I could go in 10 years. It's up to You." 

Then just TWO days later, "I really want to go now. Now? How about now?" Like a kid who was happy to just get on the train to get there but is suddenly overwhelmed with impatience at not having reached its destination. It just keeps going along the tracks at a nice easy pace.

Well when you're overwhelmed with a desire you often beg God to either satisfy it or take it away because its torture tends to be unbearable. But He is too good for He satisfies it with Himself.
In a moment of desperation I lamented that Amy Carmichael was not alive because I felt that writing to her and hearing her direct encouragement to my direct problem was the only thing that would help. In a way it was. Because God who works outside the limits of time, inspired her to write a piece of encouragement during her life that fell on that night's reading and into my empty hands.
Here is what it said.

3. THE QUARRY

"His thoughts said, 'The time of preparation for service is longer than I had imagined it would be, and this kind of preparation is difficult to understand.'

His Father said, 'Think of the quarry whence came the stone for My house in Jerusalem.'"

4. THE TOOLS

"His thoughts said, 'I wonder why these special tools are used?'

His Father said, 'The house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither; so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building.

'If thou knewest the disappointment it is to the builders when the stone cannot be used for the house, because it was not made ready before it was brought thither... then, if thou knewest My purpose for thee, thou wouldst welcome any tool, if only it prepared thee quietly and perfectly to fit into thy place in the house.'"