Yesterday I attended our church's monthly missions luncheon. I've never been on a missions trip, but I definitely have the desire to be sent out. I read a lot and often consider the poverty of this world and long to help, in any small miniscule way. My brother spent three months in a closed country in North Africa this summer, and he was with me at the luncheon. Also, I brought my daughters. They are too young for global missions, but my prayer for them is they will always be aware of how blessed they are, and the responsiblity that goes along with that blessing. My oldest seems to have a special heart for missions and is eagerly saving for her first trip via the peanut butter container on the fridge.
I definitely walked away from the experience yesterday with a new insight. We listened to several groups including a couple guys who'd gone to New Orleans. One testified to the spiritual need in the hurricane katrina ravaged gulf city. To those who'd had much (compared to the majority of the world) and then had their possessions and security, and in many cases loved ones taken away, their hearts had become hard in many cases. It makes me think of Ramses when he was Pharoah of Egypt and God sent plague after plague after plague to the egyptians, and instead of surrendering to the will of the Sovereign Almighty Lord- the obvious answer- Ramses allowed his heart to become even harder. Sad, indeed.
Then there's the opposite end of the spectrum. We heard from a full time missionary from our church to Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the entire world. I've heard much about Haiti before. The mortality rate of children is so awful, that many parents refuse to even name their children before they turn five. But yesterday this missionary testified that as dismal as the situation seems to us, the Haitians have so much hope. Hope. People die everyday of hunger and preventable disease, yet THEY have hope.
Here we sit, as Americans, full stomachs, full houses, so many luxuries, yet where is our hope? We are quick to worry over the smallest irrelevent things- what we'll wear, what we'll eat, what we'll drive. We put our hope and faith in the emptiest objects. True hope is found in the Lord.
True gratitude, pure gratitude, isn't saying "thanks, God" for the jet tub and ceramic tiled floors, or the big sale at Macy's. Its realizing that we are unworthy of ANYTHING and humbly, wholeheartedly praising and worshipping and thanking the Lord of Lords for life, breath, daily bread. Anything above that is not a "perk" but another denarri meant to bless someone else.
I'm going to go a step further and wonder if thanking God for frivolous things isn't more insulting than gracious??
"Dear Lord, thank you so much for this house. Now the kids can all have their own bedrooms and bathrooms. Thank you, Lord, for the hardwood floors and crown molding. Thank you for the stainless steel appliances, and hardwood floors,and the giant closets in the master bedroom."
I can't help but wonder if God's not up there, His heart painfully aching, "This was never my will for you, child. You will wind up both working overtime to pay for these things. You will spend thousands of dollars filling those closets. Your children will use those bedrooms to shut you out of their lives. I had so much MORE planned for you, if you could have just been content with less, then I would have really showed you riches beyond your wildest dreams- and others would have been so blessed with the extra- how many of my children you could have fed! How many of my servants you could have sent to speak my Word and show them life!"
The sin inside us wants to argue, "God wants me to be happy!" "I worked hard for this!" "That's not my job to do!" The truth is that He has greater joy for us than happiness, we haven't really worked all that hard, and yes, it is our job.
This has sort of become the passage of the year for me:
"Our desire is not htat others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: 'He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.'" 2 Corinthians 8:13-15
To Nathanial, who quickly put his faith and hope in Jesus, Christ said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that." John 1:50.
I always sort of thought that when a person goes on a missions trip to a third world country for the first time, they come back changed, more appreciative of how God has blessed them because of the destitute culture they witnessed, kind of like saying "Thank goodness I don't have to live like that everyday." but I think now its more of the testimony of hope and faith of those who went to reach out to. "If they, who have nothing, can be so full of hope, then how much more so should I be full of that hope?"
