On Sunday morning, I brought a good friend from high school
with me to church. As we sat side by side, singing worship songs, listening to
the sermon, and walking up together to take communion, I found myself close to
tears several times. No one else in that room knew the story. No one else in
the room knew the beautiful miracle that had walked into their sanctuary that
morning. But I knew. And I could not help but marvel.
We had a guest speaker at church, and he preached on “The
Motive for Missions”. As my friend and I headed to brunch afterwards, we
enjoyed a lively discussion- about the sermon, about scripture, about who God
is and how He loves us. We stopped talking just long enough to put our names in
at the IHOP, which was bursting at the seams with people, and then we squeezed
onto a bench to wait for the promise of omelets.
During a pause in our conversation, I took a deep breath and
said to my friend, “You know, I’m not sure if I’ve actually told you this…..But
I am going to Spain as a missionary. That’s what I’m doing. Yes, I will be there as a teacher, but first
and foremost I am going is to share the hope of Jesus with my students and with
the people of Spain.”
I sort of paused, held my breath, and looked at her out of
the corner of my eye. Would she understand? So many people think of
“missionaries” as crusaders, insensitive bible thumpers determined to shove
western culture down the collective throat of the nations. She’s still a
relatively new Christian. She did not grow up in church, and she has no
experience with what missions looks like. I wasn’t quite sure what she would
think of this idea, this me identifying as a missionary thing, and I found
myself desperately hoping that she would not misunderstand my heart. Turns out,
I did not need to worry.
She gave me a small nod and said, “I mean, I figured that it
was something like that. It’s you. You’re going to go love people. I feel like you
were a missionary to me when we were in high school, right?”
Relief flooded me. “Yes!” I said, almost laughing, “That’s exactly
what I was!”
And then we paused
for a moment to remember together. We remembered a time when she did not
believe that there was a God. A time not so long ago when her family was
fractured, when friends had deserted her, when she had no one to turn to and
all seemed hopeless and dark. We reminisced about all those hours of theological
conversation we shared in deserted high school parking lots and on benches by
the lake.
“You know,” she said reflectively, “I really don’t know what
would have happened to me if He had not found me when He did.” I nodded, and
smiled with my whole heart, praising God for the ways that He moves and the
ways that He pursues His people.
What does it mean to be a missionary? Why do we as the
people of God claim that missions is important or something that we should care
about? It constantly amazes me that the all-powerful God of the Universe, who
is fully satisfied within the perfect mysterious relationship that is the
trinity, and who wants for nothing, would choose to create and rescue and be
intimately part of the lives of people like my friend and I. He did not need to
create the universe, but He did. He did not need to sacrifice Himself to rescue
every person that ever lived or ever will live.
But He did. He does not need us,
His children, in order to achieve glory or worship or fame. If every one of our
voices fell silent, the very rocks would cry out and proclaim His greatness.
And yet. This awesome wondrous Lord, chooses to live and breathe and speak and
work through us. When His children submit to Him, when we allow His love and
His grace and His mercy to change us from the inside out, we are then able to
be Christ’s hands and feet. We no longer serve or speak on our own, but we
become His ambassadors. Though He could easily send angels to write the gospel
across the sky in blazing letters, impossible to mistake, He chooses us as His
less than perfect messengers instead. I think He does it because we each carry
with us a precious story of grace. And that story has a way of growing more
priceless the more we give it away.
We serve a fearsome, wrathful, beautiful, tender-hearted
Savior. He rips through the temple in righteous indignation at the sight of His
Father’s house reduced to a market. He calls the religious leaders “vipers” and
“white-washed tombs”. He despises the sin and the hypocrisy that ravages His
precious people. He weeps at the death of His best friend. He refuses to reject
the adulterous woman. He makes breakfast on the beach for those who had
abandoned him. He bears lash and thorn and nail rather than see a single scratch
touch any of His beloved. Why missions? Because in every suburb, in every
village, in every ghetto, and in every palace around the world there remains men
and women who do not know. They walk every day in guilt, addiction, shame,
violence, war, perfectionism, performance, anxiety, and desperation, not
knowing that this gracious King has come to make the wounded whole. With the
example of His sacrifice, Christ compels us to put feet to faith, to reach the
ones He died for that do not yet cherish His name.
Missions means creating space for God to move. Missions
means surrender and availability to the God who desires ALL people to be saved.
Missions looks like wiping away tears. It tastes like bread in a hungry mouth. It
sounds like the speaking of truth in love even when it is not politically correct
or culturally acceptable. Missions feels like scrubbing floors and building
walls when there is no one to praise your service. It smells like the streets
and the unwashed bodies and the unsavory places where “decent” people would
never be seen. Missions means doing and saying and going and giving in ways
that you never ever would have in a million years if you were the one calling
the shots in your own life.
And somewhere in the midst of such obedience- we glorify and
bless the heart of the God who allows us the honor of serving Him.
As I sat in church next to my friend last Sunday, I
marveled. When I look at her, I see a passion, a peace, and a purpose that now
characterize everything that she does. I planted seeds that God grew into a
garden. He gained a daughter. I gained a sister. And just think, if my
sixteen-year-old self had not stepped out in weak and shaky faith to share the
hope of Jesus all those years ago, then I would have missed the miracle. And that
would have been a true tragedy.
To find out more about Kaye’s ministry in Spain and how you
can be part of what God is doing there, check out her website at kayesparks.wix.com/Spain
