Missions: Carrying Your Share of the Load
Rita Kay Driggers
Close your eyes and remember back to childhood when someone fell on the playground and needed to be carried to the nurse’s office. You probably were not strong enough to carry that person by yourself, but you might have been successful if you and a friend had worked together. Remember grabbing your left forearm with your right hand, and having someone else do the same…then joining your left hands to the other person’s right forearm to form a seat? The seat that the two of you made in this way could be used to carry someone for a fairly long distance that would have been impossible for you to do alone.
We didn’t know it at the time, but that same kind of cooperation is a perfect picture of missions…even in 2010! Christians, listening to the urging of the Holy Spirit, are impressed with needs in San Antonio or around the world, and they work together to meet those needs. That’s why three of our members have just returned from helping to provide pure water and hygiene instruction in Costa Rica. That is also why more than twenty will go to Ghana this summer to do missions in different ways: building churches, teaching Bible School, teaching new Christians how to witness to others, and as much variety in ministry as there are talents in the group that is going. God has created each of us with talents for just such a time as this. We may never have realized it, but He was planning ahead!
But what if you can’t go? Must you be left out of God’s plan to reach the world? Not at all! Your mission may be to share a kind word or a casserole with someone in your neighborhood…Or to mentor in a neighborhood school… Or to greet people who come to TriPoint…Or to help serve lunch at the Ruble Center to children whose meals stop when school lets out. Just keep that picture in your mind—of people reaching out to help others. Then see where God might impress you to serve.
Instead of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” perhaps we should each promise God to be in a missional state of mind…where we are attuned to people and places that could use our help. Probably if we are willing, we will find that we have the time, we have the resources, and we have the talent to make a difference in our world.