As the end of this adventure is nearing…we’re all starting the seemingly daunting discussions…”What are you going to do when you get home?”
It got me thinking why I came on this journey to begin with.
I wanted to take God out of the box of American Christianity. Quite frankly, I never intentionally put Him in the box, but I knew the safe and comfortable view I held of Him, wasn’t all of Him. I knew it would be forced to expand after serving Him throughout 11 different countries.
And…it turns out God looks different in Europe and the Middle East…
Africa…and Asia…
than He does in America.
Not contradictory…but complimentary.
Bigger.
All encompassing.
I wanted to expand the horizons of His calling on my life. I wanted to see and experience the broken world across the nations…and receive a broken heart in exchange. And then I’d trade in that broken heart for a lifetime of serving Him.
Recently in Vietnam…
I laid down an orphan for her afternoon nap…in between 20 others…all diagnosed with HIV…abandoned and neglected by the very parents who passed along this fate.
I wrapped up another children’s program…with their tiny hands in mine as they joyfully skipped alongside me…and the next day they picked up trash on the streets to earn a living instead of going to school.
I’ve found brokenness.
So as the end nears and I ponder the question “What are you going to do when you get home?”…I asked Him…after seeing all of these injustices and the realities of the broken world…”What do you want me to do?”
He answered me with the same question…
My dear child…”What do you want to do?”
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Matthew 9:35-38
Maybe the most important question isn’t where you will go…but if you will go.*
*go could be the nations, go could be next door — or both!
Maybe the most important question isn’t what you will do…but will you do anything at all.
After exposing some of the realities of the slave trade, abolitionist William Wilberforce once said:
“Having heard all of this you may choose to look the other way…but you may never again say that you did not know.”
Now that we know…we are responsible.
