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Missionaries just get it.
Priest, Religious or lay person, those who leave home and family to make the Lord known realize that what counts most is the moment. I remember sitting outside on a porch in Belize with lay missionaries who were serving there.
One young woman was talking about her feelings as she started her service. “I came down here to change the world, to solve all the problems, to make everything all right,” she said. “Boy, did I have that wrong!” She told of the nights she would just lie on that porch, asking God to help her just do something. And then that young woman said something I’ve never forgotten. She said that she came to understand that it wasn’t about doing but about just being in every moment with every person. “God is in every moment waiting for you to find Him,” she told me.
Now I’m a doer – maybe even pathologically so – and I tend to fight against the inevitable distractions of the day. But after having that conversation with a missionary – and then seeing her words lived out in the witness of every missionary I’ve ever spoken with – I’m trying to let the moment rule. Like missionaries, I’m living to see the Lord in the moment-by-moment encounters of every day. And if that means crumbling up my scheduled “to do” list because the moment advises something else, then so be it.
Like missionaries, I’m trying to see what the Lord wants me to do in each and every moment. As I hear missionaries tell it, that may be something as simple as offering a listening heart, or a simple hug. It could be as basic as letting someone cry or offering someone – even a stranger – a smile. Daily life for me has now become about those moments, and the chance to find the Lord in every grace-filled one of them.
Yes, missionaries do get it – and I’m grateful for the moment with one of them that helped me understand that I can see the Lord, every day, one soul at a time.
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