A week ago, I had the privilege of preaching a sermon at my church. One of the highlights of my talk was a reflection on the beauty God has shown me on the World Race. By His grace, I’ve seen more beautiful things in eleven months than perhaps some people see in a lifetime. The following are pictures that my former teammates (a few of whom are excellent photographers) and I have taken. There’s one from each month:
Also, when I say that I’ve seen these beautiful things, I usually don’t mean that we did the tourist thing, walked around some places, took some pictures, and then went to a nice hotel. When I say seen, I mean that we got the whole experience out of all these places. For a couple of these pictures, I crawled out of my tent at 6 in the morning, and this is literally what I would see. Every single day for a month. I’m going to be honest and say that I didn’t appreciate these places half as much as I should have when I was seeing it every day. Probably because I was seeing it every day. And there are tastes, smells, sounds, and bugs that are in a lot of these pictures that you won’t experience out of a snapshot that only engages your sense of sight. But looking back at these places now, it is one breathtaking sight.
But here’s the thing. I’m also going to tell you as you’re looking through these pictures that the most beautiful things God has shown me on the Race are not things that I could capture on camera, and are not even the things I can completely describe for you here with my words even as I try.
Beauty?
Beauty was the smile of a Down Syndrome boy and his mother during therapy in Zambia, where 80% of special needs children die before the age of 5, and he would probably be in that 80% if not for the missionaries we met dedicated to living out kingdom of heaven here on earth, valuing the least of these.
Beauty was the sound of our all night prayer and worship, so loud and strong that for the first time during the morning in a Muslim village in Malawi, we didn’t hear the booming call to prayer.
Beauty was in the sobs of an eleven-year-old boy in Estonia, the least religious country in the world, hearing a worship song we were playing, and realizing for the first time in his life that he was not alone. That God was saying to him, “Though you feel I’m far away, I’m closer than your breath. I am with you more than you know. Come to me. I’m all you need and I’ll never fail. ”
Beauty tasted like noodles in milk, the meal we ate at a crisis home for women and children who had been to hell and back, with hearts ready for the healing touch of Jesus who was a man, but who was gentle and loving and kind.
Beauty was hearing a testimony about a Chinese college student crossing over from death to life as she heard and understood for the first time that, “God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son for HER.”
Beauty was in the tears of fellowship near the end of our time in Mongolia when the stoic, unsmiling wife of the pastor we served all month testified about how a few weeks before our team showed up, her sister was shot to death, and she was about to enter the busiest season of farm life in grief and mental, physical, and spiritual exhaustion. And in the time we spent with her family, doing what we thought were the mundane tasks of caring for her children, shepherding sheep, churning milk, frying dough, and sawing logs, she felt the supernatural presence of the Lord near, comforting her heart and giving strength to her broken spirit.
Beauty was redeeming the feeling of touch and the meaning of value for prostitutes in Thailand’s red light districts.
Beauty was in the delighted screams of preschoolers in Cambodia able to attend the Christian school we taught at and have that be their place of refuge, joy, and childhood in the midst of alcoholism and drug abuse in their homes.
Beauty was the smell of fresh paint we put on the walls of a home of hope for sex trafficked women in Saigon, Vietnam.
Beauty was the gray, empty streets of early morning in Lumbini, Nepal, the birthplace of Buddha. And gray, empty is beautiful, because these streets were once teeming with the orange robes of Buddhist monks. Several years ago the spiritual atmosphere of the place was transformed when Chinese missionaries that my church works with in our short-term missions to Nepal, came and opened a guesthouse and a restaurant.
And sometimes guys, that’s what ushering in the Kingdom looks like in the nations. A Chinese restaurant. But it is still one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen on this earth. More beautiful than the pictures I show you here.
Because when the kingdom of heaven here in our midst where Jesus reigns in our hearts, is brought to those who have never tasted and seen the goodness of His sovereignty, that moment where these people get just a glimpse of that King and get just a step into that Kingdom. That is beauty. It is worth yearning for. It is worth fighting for. It is worth suffering for. Worth living for, and worth dying for.
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” -Isaiah 52:7
