I come back to this blog, year after year, at sporadic moments of life's quandaries or elations (my computer is determined that elations--with that 's'--is not a word, but I will make up words if I want to!). It would seem that God has placed this outlet heavy on my mind the last few days. I therefore, sit indian-style before the computer, typing what you now read. It is funny, don't you think, that we find ourselves where God wants us when we least expect it? Like me, here now, alone in an apartment, waiting for life to change again. And you too, if you are seeking His will, are right on the edge or smack in the middle of it. Yes. I would submit that fact as quite the quandary! And so it is that I came to type an entry tonight.
How is it that God's will comes to pass? How is it that we humans dare to think we know His will? How, indeed, do we suppose ourselves to actually hear His voice or feel Him moving us? How do those who do not believe in God play in all of this? How is it that we presume to assign the nobility of a task or the value of a certain qualification? Could making a yummy scone not equal the skill and importance of a scientist on a team who is working to help treat or cure a disease? Oh, but I must be careful, because you see I have no answers to any of these questions. I will only set your mind on the circular, rather tangled path that mine is on. No. I do not seek to answer life's mysteries tonight. Perhaps tomorrow.
What I would like to present to you is an excerpt from a book I am reading called No Graven Images by Elisabeth Elliot. I have encountered this first hand, what she describes in her novel. I have witness and experienced it. It is a curiosity and a simplicity of who we are as followers of Christ. So, tonight, whether your mission field is across the ocean, on a college campus, in a factory, in a cubicle, or in the corner office of a big city high rise, read and revel in the fact that we all question and wonder at who we are and where we are and why we are. Know that wherever you are, if you are trying desperately to "qualify" or questioning anything, it is okay (Isaiah 41:10). God is working (Philippians 1:6). God is faithful (1 Corinthians 1:9). He has already qualified you and He loves you with much more desperation than you will ever succeed at feeling, let alone imparting!
You can read the book and find for yourself what happens after this moment in the missionary's life. I will just supply you with her own little moment of puzzling and perhaps it, by itself, left unanswered, will encourage you as it has me. The following is written from the perspective of a young, single woman missionary in Ecuador working to translate the Bible.
"But then there was still my lack of spirituality, of which, God knew, I had plenty of evidence every day. Why, the very evening of the day I had first visited Rosa I had come home elated, praising God for progress, and as I turned the key in the lock a fingernail snapped. Damn it all! was my immediate response, followed by shock in thinking how shocked everyone would be to know that such a word was even a part of my vocabulary. Of course I had not said it aloud--the word was forbidden at home, was not so much as admitted to though--but I had thought it, and I thought it again when, a minute later, as I was searching for a nail file to repair the damage, the bureau drawer stuck first on one side, the on the other, and suddenly jerked our and dropped to the floor with a bang.
"Missionaries are human beings, after all,"was a phrase I had heard, and at that moment it struck me as being so patently ridiculous that I wondered if anyone had ever really uttered it. Human beings! Dear God, what else could I or anyone else have though? Could we have imagined that there were superhuman, perhaps, or ex-human? People who had turned into something else, subject no longer to human passion and temptation, invulnerable to the ordinariness of living? My mind jumped back to the missionary homes I had visited since coming to Ecuador--the squalling babies, rickety ironing boards, endless discussions of hepatitis and maid problems and customs difficulties. But, I argued with myself, God wants more than this. He offers us something higher and richer, and by His grace I will appropriate what He offers, I will be spiritual-minded, even if I am a human being. Now and then my thoughts dwelt on a suitably spiritual level (it seemed easier when I was with the Indians than when I was at home) but I was not the missionary my friends hoped I was, of that I was certain, and I wanted desperately to qualify."
