Sometimes we give compliments in the dinner line. When the whole squad was together at the beginning of the month in India, one team would serve meals each day. Often, members of the serving team would give thoughts, encouragements, or words they had for their squad mates as they got their food. One day as I’m getting my rice and curry, a squad mate said to me, “Kelly, when I think of you, I think miss USA. you’ve got the brains and the beauty and the smile.”
I was a little taken aback. Of course that’s a compliment, but it was definitely an unexpected one. I want to exude Christ, not a pageant girl. I can do more than smile and wave, right?
This month, we’ve been traveling around the states of eastern India hosting medical camps. It’s been a whirlwind, amazing and honestly a little exhausting. We’re traveling with a medical team and seeing hundreds of patients at each camp, setting up and staying at schools in villages. We’re giving care to people groups that are unknown to most of the world. We’re going into areas where they don’t know Christ, and they definitely don’t know what to think of white people. Bus rides are long, roads are incomprehensibly bumpy, and sometimes the lines of locals wanting to receive medical care from the “white doctors” seems never ending.
We’re strangers here. Parents pull out their phones to take photos of me taking their child’s pulse, because a white girl’s hand is holding theirs. There’s a lot of staring. People on the streets stop what they’re doing to stare at us through our bus windows when we drive by. Staring for walking and breathing, staring for being imposters. Sometimes I feel much more like a spectacle than a missionary or a disciple. So I guess miss USA does her fair share of smiling and waving after all.
In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul writes to the Corinthians about being ambassadors of Christ, and what it means to endure as servants of God. I was brought here because I was looking up verses on enduring as we grow weary between all of the long days and travel. The passage caught my eye with the thought of how cool it is to be an ambassador of Christ at all. How, 6 months ago, as I was sitting in my room doing homework and watching Netflix, I certainly couldn’t have called myself an ambassador of Christ. I’d say “passive follower” at best. Among his words on enduring in affliction and sleepless nights, Paul says, “we are treated as imposters, and yet are true, unknown, and yet well known.” (v8-9)
I’d never thought that being seen as an imposter had anything to do with being an ambassador of Christ. More often than not, the only thing I’d thought about being an “imposter” is that the stares are driving me a little bit crazy. But if I can have that in common with Paul?! If the disciples were treated as unknown? I’ll do anything to be an imposter. I’ll jump at the chance to be treated as unknown, if it means I can be known by Christ as I endure as a servant of God.
I absolutely love the work we’re doing here. I love the people of India for their hospitality and their genuine hearts. I love getting a glimpse of their culture. I love being able to give tangible help to people who wouldn’t otherwise get it. I love that we have the opportunity to be absolutely worn out doing kingdom work.
So I’ll be an imposter, even if it borders on being a spectacle. I’ll gladly wave when the men stare up at me from their roadside stores. I’ll laugh with them when they find humor in the sight of a white girl in heart sunglasses waving her hand out the window of an oversized van. I’ll smile for the pictures, and sign autographs for the kids, and give all of the genuine joy i have.
So miss USA? I’ll take it, but I’m not all the way on board with that one. I think I prefer ambassador of Christ.
