I found this today, and something about it is poking me right in the tender, growing, wide-eyed part of my soul. It sounds so right, and so exciting, and so scary. It is making me think and pray.
What really spoke to me was the lifetime-commitment aspect of it. There is such an emphasis on short-term missions these days—people biffing off to far corners of the globe to do their good deed for a few days or a few weeks—and while I’m not trying to deride the things they accomplish, there are a few things that have bugged me about the idea of missions-with-a-time-limit from the get-go 1) What real, lasting good can be accomplished in such a short time? 2) Is this serving as a conscience-soother so we can feel good about ourselves but not wholly devote ourselves to working for the Cross?
Sometimes I research missions, and it’s disheartening because you come across all these sites that emphasize traveling the world and seeing the sights—oh, and doing a good, humanitarian deed while you’re out on your “mission,” to justify it all. I just don’t understand those “week-long mission trips,” and I feel like if I become a missionary it’s going to have to be something that I do for the foreseeable future when I start. Maybe the Lord will have a time-limit in mind for how long I’ll be over there, but when I go somewhere, I want to go with the mindset that I’ll be there for as long as the Lord wants me to be there, and not for a few months that I can look forward to returning home after.
I am beginning to suspect that if I follow the Lord’s will for my life without fearful compromise, that is where it will lead. And yet at the same time, I am sorely tempted to laugh, “Who me? I’m such a timid, little thing, what can I do?” But it’s not what I can do, it’s what He can do. And He can do anything, I guess, since He’s God and all—even stamp out my shy-streak, impossible as that may seem. ;)
