We have some friends right now who are missionarying in Indonesia. They've only been there a few weeks, and recently wrote of some of the ways being a missionary looks nothing like what they thought being a missionary meant.
Let's just say we can relate.
It's part of why I've shared with you before how much we don't like being called missionaries.
The more I experience what it REALLY means to be a missionary, the more I realize that we're just talking about being a Christ-follower, like I shoulda been talking about being a Christ-follower all along.
A Christ-mirror, which we've found to be just as vital and needed in the US of A as we have in Haiti.
Which we've found to be just as natural and simple and effective for a four-year old working on ABCs as a 30 year-old with mounds of training and education.
Being a missionary Christ-follower means taking cookies to kids that don't get cookies, and staying to play with them for a while. Letting them wipe their snotty noses on your skirt. Trying to distract their sobs when playing tag involved being tagged by a tree.
It means giving some of yourself...whether that looks like your food or your money or your story or His story or your TIME, your precious time, to someone that needs it.
It means treating others like they greatly matter to God.
And so to you.
It means taking advantage of every minute you have, and seeing it all as an opportunity to be Jesus to Jesus.
It means learning someone's name, going to where they are, inviting them where you are...listening to their ever evolving story...and sharing YOUR story with them, too.
It means showing others nothing more and nothing less than just exactly what Christ has shown ME.
Telling them what Christ has told ME.
Being for others what Christ has been for ME.
Ain't none of that got anything to do with Haiti, or a profession, that's for sure.
"For not one of us lives for himself,
and not one dies for himself;
If we live we live for the Lord.
If we die, we die for the Lord.
To this end, Christ died and lived again,
that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living."
Romans 14:7-8
Love being reminded of how easy it should be to be a Chrits follower.I always make it so much more complicated!!! lIke I should be doing more, or should have done this or that instead, or said this or that instead. I love how simple you put it once again...Just be there, in the midst of it all WITH A GOD LOVING HEART :)
ReplyDelete