To say you work with kids a lot as a World Racer would be an understatement. In every single country, whether your ministry involves children or not, it’s pretty much a guarantee you will be in some way shape or form working with kids.
Don’t love kids and you are going on the Race? Well then it’s going to be a year of growth for you!
And while I have always loved children, there have been many days on this Race where I have asked myself,
“Am I really making a difference in this world or am I just a glorified babysitter?”
“Did I really just leave everything behind to play Duck Duck Goose for the twentieth time this week?”
“How is this being the hands and feet of Jesus?”
“How is this building the Kingdom?”
And while I’ve had those exhilarating months, rescuing prostitutes off the streets, casting out demons, working with women struggling with drug addictions and severe withdrawals, encouraging prisoners, breaking the law by evangelizing in the closed country of India, and sharing the gospel to hundreds of Buddhist students…a majority of my eleven months have simply been playing with children.
And while compared to those “exhilarating” months just playing with kids seemed liked babysitting, God has shown me that what we Racers are doing is so much more then just babysitting. It’s pouring into and investing in the next generation. It’s loving the least of these. It’s meeting the needs before drug addictions, demon possessions, and imprisonment can occur. It’s leaving behind everything and traveling across the world just to play Duck Duck Goose with that one child…just so that one will know how truly loved and special they really are.
My last month on the Race wasn’t spent in a hospital, prison, or rescue home, ministering to the sick, poor, orphaned, widowed, enslaved, or elderly.
It was spent at a park playing with children.
It was spent cuddling, hugging, laughing, running, talking about Spider Man and Spongebob, and playing tag.
It was spent wiping tears and runny noses and holding hands.
I think we as Christians, especially the we that are apart of the radical generation that is arising, can get so caught up in all the needs and injustices around the world that we tend to romanticize missions. We envision ourselves rescuing women and children off the streets, prosecuting traffickers, saving child soldiers, journeying to savage tribes to share the gospel, etc. But we forget about those “average” people, the ordinary needs that are all around us.
And while all of that is great and I have no doubt that God is calling many of us to those places, I think that we can forget about that child who lives across the street from us. We can forget about that single mom or dad who is busy working two jobs to support their child. We can forget about that middle school girl or boy who is struggling to fit in and is faced with decisions about drugs, alcohol, and sex.
And we certainly don’t see ourselves packing up and moving to foreign lands just to hang out with kids all day.
And while those needs may not seem as dire or serving those needs may not seem as radical, they are still very much needs. Needs that Jesus has commanded us to meet. Needs that Jesus considers just as important as any other.
At first I was so busy worried about what my Race looked like on the outside to everybody else…
She traveled all over the world just to hold some kids, she could have done that in her backyard?
That’s what she did with her year?
that I didn’t consider what Jesus thought about my Race. See I lost sight of the fact that when Jesus called me to the Race, He knew exactly what every moment of these eleven months would look like. He designed my Race. He placed in front of me the needs that needed to be met, the people that needed to be cared for, and the children that He wanted me to love.
And if it’s important enough for Jesus, then I consider it the highest honor to be able to serve and meet those needs.
To start off our last week of ministry, before heading to the park to play with our children, my teammate shared with us a story from a podcast of Timothy Keller:
In the great divorce, there’s a man whose on the outskirts of heaven and he’s seeing people come out of heaven. And at one point he sees this incredibly towering beautiful woman surrounded by girls and boys who are dancing. And it’s filled with light and he’s got a guide and he asks the guide this:
“I can only partly remember the unbearable beauty of her face. Is it…Is it?” I whispered to my guide
Not at all he said. It’s someone you’ll never have heard of. Her name on Earth is Sarah Smith and she lived on Golder’s Green.
But she seemed to be a person of great importance I asked.
Have you not heard that fame up here and fame on Earth are two quite different things?
But who are all these young men and women around her?
They are her sons and daughters.
My sir she must have had a very large family.
No, every boy that met her became her son, every girl that met her became her daughter.
Wasn’t that hard on their parents?
No, there are those who steal other children’s parents but her love was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. And now the radiance of her life that she has from Christ the Father flows over into them all. Already there is enough joy in her little finger to awaken all the dead things of the universe to life.
On Earth Sarah Smith, because her beauty wasn’t on the surface, nobody knew who she was. But she had Jesus’ beauty. She had Jesus’ glory, which is the beauty of not caring about surface beauty and the glory of self giving.
And if you see what Jesus did for you and your moved by that it frees you from glitz. It frees you from partiality. It frees you from favoritism.
The World Race has shown me what missions is really like. It’s not always glamorous and most days can seem completely average. Not everyday leaves you with an epoch story to tell or an awesome blog that will get a thousand hits. Some days you do feel a little less like a missionary and a little more like a glorified babysitter. But it’s reminded me of our mission in life. It’s loving the Lord, your God, with all your heart, so much so that your love for Him pours out onto all those around you. It’s loving those right before you, wherever you may be. And meeting their needs, whatever they may be.
And sometimes that just may look like holding a child.
