Heading Home?

Another flight, another trip back to base. Home doesn’t seem accurate as our flat is not either where I am from nor where I want to retire. But then, where is home? I guess it’s true what they say, home is where your heart is and right now, my heart is in the part of the world where there is less than two percent Christian. My wife is in Delhi, our kids and grandkids are in Oklahoma/Arkansas. It will be good to get back to base as it’s been a long month away from Sandy. Though she has been busy with her bible study group and I have been occupied with students at the Center for Intercultural Training in North Carolina, the separation gets a bit stale after the third week. I get tired of long flights (thirty-six hours from Arkansas to India), haggling for decent seats (anything but in the middle), the long lines at immigration, the incredible long wait for my luggage and the one hour taxi ride back to the house in the middle of the night. I know some people think travel is exciting, but I lost that thrill one million air miles back. I wonder how long I will keep doing this? I wonder why I do it now?

In the grand scheme of things I realize that my teaching looks pretty insignificant. But that’s not what I thought about looking into the faces of my class at CIT. Fifteen people getting ready to move overseas to places like Kyrgyzstan, Papua Indonesia and Thailand. For a brief moment, hardly a breath in man’s existence on earth, I gave my students my best in how to live and serve Christ overseas. I challenged their theologies, their worldview assumptions as well as help them think through the issues of how to do their ministries. In the course of teaching “Equipping For Cross-Cultural Life,” I also gave my thoughts on raising kids, working as a team and the future of North American missions. Perhaps what I do will make a minor ripple in what God is doing for His honor and purpose throughout the world. I’m not trying to make a statement nor pursuing a place in history. I’m a bit player, like us all, in the drama in time and space. If it works for Him, it has to work for me.