I thought of titling this post, “desiring to love…struggling to understand.” That seemed a little long, and a bit wordy. But that about sums up parts of mission life, I think. Why do we do this? Why do we follow Christ to the ends of the earth to share the gospel? Because of love. We love God and we love people. How do we do this? How do we enter in to places we do not know and cultures that exist in such depth? We try (or struggle) to understand. We try to meet them at their place of true need.
We are currently at the half-point of our month long missions training. Wow. We have been on quite the roller coaster of an emotional and spiritual journey these past 2 weeks. It has almost been culture shock to be faced with all the things we have not thought deeply about regarding other cultures! We have been convicted of our own ethnocentrism, and reminded that even though we don’t mean to do it we often regard ourselves as ‘more than’ just because we are American, or even because we are Christians. We often don’t truly see the needs of others. We often assume they think just like we do, or if they don’t then they should. We often try to jump in and fix things that might not need to be fixed, or at least not in the way or timing that we think. This can apply to serving overseas, and even in other cultures here in the U.S.
I have to admit I like my comfort zone. I like being able to predict at least a few things. So, I’m being stretched out of my comfort (yet again) and realizing that I still have much to learn. God is the Creator of culture. He designed the different peoples, tribes and tongues of the world. All cultures are fallen, but they are also beautiful. I pray I can be the learner God wants me to be, and approach this whole world leading not with my great amount of knowledge & resources, but with an intent to love and a desire to understand.
