We applaud those who risk themselves for others: doctors and nurses fighting Ebola in the frontline, missionaries serving the underprivileged in rural areas; advocates championing stigmatized causes. But when they are the very people we love the most, this can change.
We want them to come home, stay safe and protected in our arms. We don’t want them to leave us, even if they were fighting for the worthiest cause.
But the reality is this: Our response to our loved one’s risk-taking, is a reflection of our own understanding and grasp of our redemption by God, and His requirement of us.
I am grateful, that for all our time in Africa serving and travelling to minister, teach and serve at bible schools in different continents and volunteering at the HIV-centre, not once has our church, our friends or our parents asked us to go home.
Week after week, letters are exchanged, text messages are bounced to and fro, and photos of our monkey adventures, the occasional good meal at a restaurant and breathtaking pictures of African sunsets are emailed over thousands of miles. We never talk about our close Ebola scare, cross-cultural frustrations, the hair-raising ride on a boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) where my knees were bumped by a land-cruiser in crazy traffic, my having 50 mosquito and horsefly bites within 3 days of being in a in a malarial zone without anti-malarials, which I am unable to take.
Topics are deliberately kept light-hearted.
Missionaries may not have as much in material things as people back home. We may have less pay, less clothes, less vacations, less indulgences. But there is one thing which keeps us going, that fills our love and energy tanks to overflowing- it is the unsaid between the “hello, how’re you doing” and “we’re praying for you”.
Every letter, email, text message, facebook comment or occasional parcel gives us an incredible boost, to know we are not forgotten. It says: You are being remembered, you are being prayed for, thank you for doing meaningful work.
It says volumes. More than appreciation, more than support, it is the resounding echo of “Stay there, don’t come home” which translates the most love to us.
It means: we understand the risks you’re taking, and the risk of us losing you for whatever reason, but we understand the call God has for your life. It means we don’t necessarily understand what you mean when you say you are now free to suffer for the sake of the gospel, when you say “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”, but we are releasing you (Philippians 1:21). It means it doesn’t make it easier to be so far away from you and have you miss birthdays, weddings, festivals and special occasions, but we celebrate them with you in mind.
It means we miss you, but we love you.
Stay there, don’t come home.
Most times, these words aren’t ever spoken. They are caught in limbo, between a “how’re you doing” and “we love you”. But they speak volumes nonetheless, echoing with raucous support and deafening cheering, in their own quiet, silent way.
To our Mums and Dads, family and friends, thank you for loving us and for releasing us.
As Thanksgiving has passed and Christmas draws nearer, we are grateful.
“But none makes the worth of Christ shine more brightly
than sacrificial love for other people in the name of Jesus.
If Christ is so valuable that the hope of his immediate and eternal fellowship after death
frees us from the self-serving fear of dying and
enables us to lay down our lives for the good of others,
such love magnifies the glory of Christ
like nothing else in the world.”
– John Piper, Risk is Right