We are celebrating Go! week this week at Union where we are living as missionaries in residence. Today was the first day and one of the songs that we sang summed up a lot of what we see as we work among our American counterparts. It is a beautiful song that begins with the hymn "When I survey the wondrous cross" and later sings a chorus about the "wonderful" cross. It is a wonderfully passionate song about the cross. I understand the sentiment completely as we celebrate the forgiveness/salvation that we have as a result of what Jesus suffered for us on the cross. It still strikes me odd as we sing like this about a cross. It is such a romantic view of an instrument of death. There just seems to be a disconnect somewhere.
So it is with missions. We have romanticized so much about missions today that we forget that many have surrendered to this call knowing that they may die in obedience to such. There are a lot of neat, clean definitions of missions out there today. I think on my first term and define missions as the following:
Missions is-
suffering the mocking of a people who often have less than a sixth grade education
placing your children in a situation where they could be in danger, mocked also, or just have to live without grandparents, close friends, etc.
seeing your wife exposed to inappropriate advances of men from other cultures with little recourse.
living among a people who lie on a regular basis and never knowing who you may trust and for how long.
dealing with illness on a regular basis because people refuse to wash their hands.
The list goes on. All of this is done for the sake of the good news and in obedience to the call of God upon someone's life. I would not take it back for a moment and I know that God planted many seeds through our first term on the field.
Next time we are tempted to romanticize the cross and missions we need to take another look and realize what we are really talking about. Jesus suffered an ugly death to pay the price for our ugly sin and we now have the call to face that same ugliness with the beautiful good news of Jesus Christ.
Stay ugly and just say no to the romantics out there!
Oh yeah and have a nice day. . . .
P.S. If you are wondering about the picture of Lydia at the beginning. I just love this picture and she is one reminder of the goodness of God in my life.
