My first missions trip, when I was 17, there were 2 crews within our team – contruction crew, and children’s ministry. I put myself on construction feeling I didn’t have much to offer in actual ministry, but then wound up running around the soccer field with a kid or two on my back as we played during our breaks from building. We’d make up random games with the kids, not speaking each other’s language, while we sat and ate lunch. Others were in charge of articulating the lessons, but I learned then the value of just being available and willing to fall in love with someone just because they’re someone. My heart hasn’t left the missions field since.
My overseas work has been a mish mash of locations and work in the years since, as has my work in Canada. This has often led me to question whether I’m doing it all for the adventure of it or if I’m really being guided down these paths. I know it’s the latter – the number of things I’ve missed in the lives of my sisters and literally missing half of my nephew’s life wouldn’t be worth anything other than dad himself. Sometimes people would ask what the ‘overall goal’ of it all was, and not being a goal oriented person I wasn’t too good at answering that one – I just follow, knowing the goal is dad’s department. But this last week of settling into my place has given me a lot of reflection time, and this morning I had a bit of a revelation as to the common theme in all the work I’ve been doing. My life’s goal, a vision so to speak, and the path I’ve been put on for 9 years – raise up a generation. Make them into everything they’re meant to be.
Sometimes that means empowering a pastor to reach his people, or bringing truth to a blinded nation. Sometimes it’s working in a boys home or being a youth leader. Always it’s being willing to love someone enough to walk with them towards being everything they were created to be, and that is not an easy path to live on. It takes being broken over and over again, getting torn asunder so you can be re-built, and whether you’re in it or walking someone you love through it, it’s painful. The World Race was such a good fit for me because that is what our leaders believe in and strive for with every action of their lives – raise up a generation. Spiritually father, mentor, disciple, and raise all those God brings to them, because as co-heirs of the son our inheritence is one another, the kingdom come. And an inheritence comes with a responsibility to care for it, so empowering others to take over that care taking and building is part and parcel with this whole thing. So that’s the direction I’ve been headed in, this last year really showing me what it takes to do it at 100%.
You know, incase you were wondering what all this is about. I know I was.
