Nancy and I have been spending this week at a conference
with people who work to care for missionaries. I've been here before and it has
become a craved experience. But I've had trouble putting my finger on exactly
what it is about it that feeds me.
I think it’s pain.
OK, I’m no masochist. I’m not looking for pain and I don’t think anyone here is either. But in this group there are some people with a profound richness of faith that humbles me. They are deep and loving and joyful. They are knowing, yet affirming and at peace.
And it’s displayed by people who have experienced and witnessed profound depths of loss and suffering. They are people who have spent years of their lives living with and walking beside people in their brokenness. Still they overflow with hope.
Sometimes I think we don’t believe our own hype. We pray no one scratches too deeply below the surface for fear they may find what’s really in there; a lost desperate person, just trying to connect faith with the realities of a fallen world.
But these people, people who have descended into darkness to rekindle sparks in a shattered heart, a journey no one escapes unscathed, these are real people. Light and love oozes out of them without a hint of pretext or platitude.
Somehow God can use the pain we experience to bring us to a deeper knowledge of him. We all know people like this. Many of us long to be like them. Few of us have the courage to follow them to the cross.
I think it’s pain.
OK, I’m no masochist. I’m not looking for pain and I don’t think anyone here is either. But in this group there are some people with a profound richness of faith that humbles me. They are deep and loving and joyful. They are knowing, yet affirming and at peace.
And it’s displayed by people who have experienced and witnessed profound depths of loss and suffering. They are people who have spent years of their lives living with and walking beside people in their brokenness. Still they overflow with hope.
Sometimes I think we don’t believe our own hype. We pray no one scratches too deeply below the surface for fear they may find what’s really in there; a lost desperate person, just trying to connect faith with the realities of a fallen world.
But these people, people who have descended into darkness to rekindle sparks in a shattered heart, a journey no one escapes unscathed, these are real people. Light and love oozes out of them without a hint of pretext or platitude.
Somehow God can use the pain we experience to bring us to a deeper knowledge of him. We all know people like this. Many of us long to be like them. Few of us have the courage to follow them to the cross.
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