As a mom of missionaries, "Love the people God's called your children to serve," has been rolling around my brain the last few days.
I often pray for our missionary kids, but sometimes forget to pray for the people they serve. I seem to take it for granted that their calling will automatically enable them, enable me, to love the people.
Not necessarily. Especially when we've not yet met those people, as in the case of our second daughter and family who are preparing to leave to minister among an unreached people group in Africa.
This morning I took down a 2017 wall calendar detailing pictures of their survey trip to Africa. I'd looked at the Shutterfly calendar all year long and lifted up a quick prayer as I jotted weekly items down. Buy today I really looked at the calendar. With their departure looming ahead, I considered using the calendar more intentionally in my prayer time and perhaps with our ladies' prayer group.
Then it hit me. A well of unpleasant emotion I'd never quite experienced up to this point. Anger, grief that these people staring at me in the pictures, these people I'd never met were calling my precious children away. I recoiled at the emotion. Yet I knew I couldn't run from it. I had to deal with it. That much I'd learned in 41 years of marriage to a professional counselor.
So here I am, dealing with it through writing out my thoughts and feelings as I gaze at the calendar pictures. Of pastors hungry to learn and share God's Word in their remote village settings. Of African women and children browsing crowded outdoor markets. Of my son-in-law sharing biblical principles to a group of pastors in a rustic church with dirt floors. Of my daughter smiling down at two kids hugging her legs.
I realize God is growing me to think, to pray, beyond the needs of my family to the needs of the people they're called to serve. A people He knows. Intimately knows and loves and longs to know and love Him in return. I must not horde the love He so graciously extended to me and my family. So many do not yet know, have not even heard His name once. Unfathomable.
So I come back full circle, knowing I must let my family go, once again, and knowing I desire them to go in God's will, each of us fulfilling Isaiah 6 in our own ways to the people He has called us to serve.
Yes, with all the emotion involved, knowing that even the unpleasant but very real emotions cannot overpower me or us if we keep our focus on our Savior and the people who need Him.
Ultimately, that is all that really matters. Yet I also know in the midst of this eternal task, our Father cares about us. He knows. He weeps with us . . . .
For our pain. For the pain of the people we serve.
Yet a better day is coming. A better country.
Our true Home where He longs for us all to join Him.
So we tell them.
For Love compells us to do so.
I often pray for our missionary kids, but sometimes forget to pray for the people they serve. I seem to take it for granted that their calling will automatically enable them, enable me, to love the people.
Not necessarily. Especially when we've not yet met those people, as in the case of our second daughter and family who are preparing to leave to minister among an unreached people group in Africa.
This morning I took down a 2017 wall calendar detailing pictures of their survey trip to Africa. I'd looked at the Shutterfly calendar all year long and lifted up a quick prayer as I jotted weekly items down. Buy today I really looked at the calendar. With their departure looming ahead, I considered using the calendar more intentionally in my prayer time and perhaps with our ladies' prayer group.
Then it hit me. A well of unpleasant emotion I'd never quite experienced up to this point. Anger, grief that these people staring at me in the pictures, these people I'd never met were calling my precious children away. I recoiled at the emotion. Yet I knew I couldn't run from it. I had to deal with it. That much I'd learned in 41 years of marriage to a professional counselor.
So here I am, dealing with it through writing out my thoughts and feelings as I gaze at the calendar pictures. Of pastors hungry to learn and share God's Word in their remote village settings. Of African women and children browsing crowded outdoor markets. Of my son-in-law sharing biblical principles to a group of pastors in a rustic church with dirt floors. Of my daughter smiling down at two kids hugging her legs.
I realize God is growing me to think, to pray, beyond the needs of my family to the needs of the people they're called to serve. A people He knows. Intimately knows and loves and longs to know and love Him in return. I must not horde the love He so graciously extended to me and my family. So many do not yet know, have not even heard His name once. Unfathomable.
So I come back full circle, knowing I must let my family go, once again, and knowing I desire them to go in God's will, each of us fulfilling Isaiah 6 in our own ways to the people He has called us to serve.
Yes, with all the emotion involved, knowing that even the unpleasant but very real emotions cannot overpower me or us if we keep our focus on our Savior and the people who need Him.
Ultimately, that is all that really matters. Yet I also know in the midst of this eternal task, our Father cares about us. He knows. He weeps with us . . . .
For our pain. For the pain of the people we serve.
Yet a better day is coming. A better country.
Our true Home where He longs for us all to join Him.
So we tell them.
For Love compells us to do so.
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