A Voyage of Left-Hand Turns

5 5Surely you will summon nations you know not,

and nations that do not know you will hasten to you,
ecause of the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor.”
6Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
7Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
8“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
Isaiah 55:5--8

 Almost all of the missionaries we have met have said that they never wound up where they wanted to go and that they never followed the path they had anticipated.  Every story is filled with delays, surprises, and left-hand turns. Unanticipated events and sudden turns are such a regular part of the path to missions that such emergent events can and should be anticipated. They are part of the process.

God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts.  Thank God.  How boring and uninspiring it would be to know that everything will turn out the way we want it to.  How disappointing it would be to find that the universe works within a framework that we understand and can easily imagine and even expect.  How small would a God be who could be confined by our imaginations when we daily encounter a God who never ceases to amaze us with the unexpected, the unanticipated, and even the unwarranted?

When our original parents first violated God’s law it would have been easy to imagine an angry God swiping His hand across the face of the earth and starting over, much as I do when I start a project that goes terribly wrong.  Instead God surprised countless generations of humanity with an incredible left-hand turn at Calvary where God Himself became man and redeemed us from our sins.  The Creator submitted himself to the spit, scorn, and punishment of His creatures to save us from ourselves.  Talk about a sharp left-hand turn.

Consider our individual lives.  Regardless of when we came to an eternal relationship with God through His Son Jesus we were and remain sinners.  We are so stained by sin that a Holy God cannot look upon us.  We are fouled beyond description.  Yet into each of our lives this God who defies human logic and reason wraps us in the arms of His Son to wash us of guilt and restore us to a full relationship with Him.  Many of us first encountered the Savior while well on our way to perdition, spectacularly unaware of what lay in wait at the end of an unrepentant and wasted life.  Against all human logic, reason, and imagination God’s Son willingly suffered and died that we may live.

The path to missions is filled with delays.  Many pre-field missionaries need to learn a new language before moving on to the mission field.  This may include moving an entire family to a foreign country where nothing is familiar, everything takes a lot more time and work, children encounter the frightening unknown, spouses are stressed by what would normally be the routine, and the enemy relentlessly pounds away with doubt and despair in his quiver.  One may never feel as unsure and alone as when spiritual warfare withers even the most steeled resolve to follow the path set before the pre-field missionary.

The mission harvest is ready and full.  Billions of people have yet to encounter God in an eternal, saving relationship.  And billions do not have His word in their heart language.  Until we attended church services in a foreign language for months on end, we did not truly understand how hungry one could become to hear the Gospel in one’s heart language. When we had the happy occasion to hear a message delivered in English we could savor the living waters of His word.  There is so much to be done.  There are too many who go to the grave with no hope.  There are too many—billions who do not know the God who became man to save us from ourselves.

In Luke 10:2 Christ is recorded as saying, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”  Yet the unplanned, unanticipated, left-hand turns have turned many workers back to their homes and away from missions.  Support from mission partners—those who send those who can go—have fallen victim to the contracting economies of the world.  Mission organizations are trimming budgets, slimming staffs, and lowering expectations as support shrinks.  The harvest withers on the vine.  People live and die without ever encountering the living God or develop an eternal relationship with Him.  How incredibly sad.

The path to missions is never straight.  The lord of this world does his level worst to let people starve having never been satisfied with the bread of life.  The evil one is satisfied by the throngs who die not knowing Jesus Christ and not having God’s word to provide them with sustenance.  Each minute, each hour, each day people fall into the pit of eternal separation from God because the workers who are ready to work the harvest fall victim to the transient vagaries of economic circumstances.

Those of us who have an eternal, saving relationship with God through His Son Jesus are like voyagers who sit in the lifeboats while wearing their life jackets as we grow satisfied if not smug in our salvation as the lost continue to dance and party on the deck of a sinking boat.

Pastor John Piper, one of the clearest and loudest voices support of missions has said it best by summarizing the Great Commission in four words, “Go, send, or disobey.”  How sad if we cannot rise up and sustain an army of harvesters to snatch as many as possible from falling forever into the pit.  Our primary charge as followers of Jesus is to share Good news with the world.  He has done the hard part by redeeming us.  We just need to share that good news.  We are so close, too close to force the workers who are ready to work the harvest to stand pat and allow the harvest to wither on the vine. That’s not why God became man to save us from ourselves. 

Christ did the hard part.  We just need to let the world know what He has done.  We need to send out the workers to finish the harvest.  It’s the least we can do and it’s what Christ commanded us to do.

“For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” 

Romans 10: 12-15

The entire time we were in Burkina Faso we were imbued with the fine red dust arising from the red clay soil. Any shuffling foot, passing moto, or arid breeze would give rise to swirls of red dust that colored everything and filled the air. The scene in every direction was like a painting on a dull, red canvas.

Half-way through our stay and in our struggle to keep the dust out of our apartment,... our clothes, our laptop, our food, and our noses and mouths we surrendered to its inevitability. The dust was unrelentingly pervasive and invasive—it was to be a part of everything. Clothes are now died a ruddy color. I believe that there may even be traces of the dust incorporated into our DNA. Resistance (as the Borg would say) was futile.

Then it struck me how much the red dust was like God’s love. The dust, much like God’s love is visible everywhere. It fills and covers everything. It finds a way inside even after our best efforts to keep it out. Like His grace, it is irresistible and it becomes part of us. It covers us like a blanket. And when we think that we have succeeded in removing every trace of it we find that it has avoided our best efforts and is still very much present.

Much like the heat of the sun in Psalm 19, there is no escaping the fine red dust or God’s love. We may think we have it for a moment only to discover that it is still very much present.

Thank God.

3 February 2013

 

During the past two weeks at SIL in Burkina Faso I have come to realize that I have often (or usually) taken the Holy Bible for granted.

I am humbled after hearing how individual translators diligently and tirelessly labor FOR DECADES (!) often under harsh bush conditions to learn new cultures and languages and then accurately and faithfully translate the Scriptures into heart languages that have not had God's word. I need to remember to celebrate the Bible as do people groups who hold it in their hands for the very first time.

I am not a translator and I still struggle in my French studies, but I am anxious to return to Burkina to do what little I can to advance Bible translation--caring for buildings and systems or even helping to repair the luggage of a translator recently arrived from Mali.
...
I envy the young man who held the basket of bread and fishes while Christ fed the thousands--it was a small role, but the opportunity to witness a miracle. I had the opportunity to join the celebration of the completion of the translation of the Holy Bible into the Fulfuldé language. It was a similar miracle in that thousands would now be able to feed on the Bread of Life.

I cannot imagine what I would do if the Bibles in our home all disappeared and I could not recall one verse of Scripture.