Here we are at the end of 2020 and on everyone’s mind is the pandemic and the lockdowns and the total change in our every day lives. Well, guess what, you’ve just had a missionary year! It wasn’t easy, was it? Now you have a better, more realistic view of why it is so hard to recruit for missions, and why it is so tough to keep people on the mission field. It isn’t easy to have your every day routine ripped away; to have seasonal holidays cancelled; to not have church (the kind of church you like and are comfortable with); to not have close and ready Christian fellowship with another Christian; to have everything that makes your life comfortable and manageable turned upside down and suddenly you need to make do with a new situation, a different way of doing things. There are some others around you going through the same thing – some are making it, some are not doing so well. And if you can make it through all this in your first 3 years… you are gonna be a good missionary. Now here’s the amazing thing – many of you DID do well, you DID manage, you DID adapt and make a new reality and way of life workable. You didn’t lose faith, you didn’t give up on Christianity, you DID find creative ways to find sense and comfort, I dare say, you realized that so much of life is just trappings, and the most important thing is a WHO – Jesus. If this is you, you are ready to be a missionary. I believe this horrible year we’ve all been through has shown you what it is you really believe, and whether that is a Person, Jesus. If you do realize this but still decide not to be a missionary, I pray you’ll take this newfound insight into the travails of the mission life and commit to a deeper prayer life for those who are missionaries, and that you will redirect some of your life’s energies into missions. There was much tragedy in this year, but for many of us, we had Christ and his church to lean on. For many other people who have no church, no access to a church, no access to Christians, no knowledge of Jesus yet alone faith in Him… how can we let another year go by when they still have this lack?
Luke 10:2b “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Do we need an even bigger wake up call?