It’s been five weeks. A whole five weeks since we touched down on Malawian soil, and to mark this occasion, I thought I’d provide a glimpse into all of the good we’ve done and lives we’ve changed in our first weeks on the field:
Glimpse over.
That was it.
In summary? We’ve done very little “good” here in Lilongwe over the past five weeks. I’ve ticked people off on the roads with my slow, shaky driving. I’ve learned just enough Chichewa to confuse everyone I try to speak with. I’ve often been too exhausted to love Matt well. In short, I’ve spent the bulk of this month just trying to survive.
And maybe that’s okay. Right now at least. Because it’s easy to enter the mission field with grandiose, romanticized notions of hitting the ground running. Of feeding the hungry! Of healing the sick! Of teaching the masses! It’s easy to assume that we, the well-educated + uber-prepared missionaries would just take off running, doling out blessings one by one, adding value by our very presence here in country.
Come to find out, NOPE.
Come to find out, Jesus was and is the only One who will ever pull off that sort of feat.
Come to find out, everyone here was doing just fine without me. In fact, there’s a strong possibility they were doing fine-r without our current state of neediness.
Five weeks in, my expectations have shifted a bit, and likewise, my prayers have followed suit:
- God, I pray that I would be with you.
- God, I pray that I would be faithful to the task you’ve put before me.
That’s it. I’ve learned in these five weeks that my job is to be with my God and to be faithful to the task He has set before me in that given moment. I have been reminded anew that His love for me is not based on my performance, nor is He sitting enthroned on high assigning grades based on how well I’m nailing this whole living overseas gig. Which is a REALLY GOOD THING because many days? I don’t.
No, I go about my days clothed in the righteousness of the One who actually DID nail this life-on-earth thing. Who DID feed the hungry. Who DID heal the sick. Who taught the masses and loved sacrificially and did all the things I fail to do well on the daily.
As I step into a new week here in Malawi, I do so with the hope that Jesus loved, served, and lived perfectly in my place because I would never be capable of doing so myself. And so, I don’t have to scramble to put on a fake “I’m fine! No really! Look at me look at me!” front for God when I’m anything but. I can limp to his throne in my flustered and worn-out state and know that He’ll look at me with eyes of compassion and love. Like a Father who finds pleasure in simply being with His child.
I can rest in the unshakable, irrevocable acceptance of the holy and righteous God because my acceptance is based entirely on someone else’s record. He looks on me with pleasure because He sees the perfection of Jesus rather than anything I have to offer. And that, my friends, is the beauty of the Gospel. That’s what keeps us going.
It’s with this assurance that we can keep putting one (perpetually-caked-in-red-African-soil) foot in front of the other in steps of obedience, remaining faithful to what He’s called us to.
So when faithfulness looks a whole lot more simplistic than we would like- a whole lot more like mopping dirty floors and caring for feverish children and learning the noun classes of a new language- we can continue on knowing that it’s not about what we do. It’s not about being an expert task-master. It’s not about us swooping in to broken situations to save the world. Rather, it’s about us pointing incessantly, fervently, and with conviction to the One who already has.
Whether we’re in Raleigh, North Carolina or Lilongwe, Malawi, the task before all of us is the same. We point to Him. We remain in Him. And we stay faithful to what’s right before us.
So, let’s get on with it, friends. We don’t got this, but we don’t have to. He does, and He always will.
