Return On Investment?

Well, we are on our way. From Lincoln, Nebraska to Denver and now in San Francisco. Next will be Sydney and finally on to Port Moresby and Goroka in Papua New Guinea. A very long trip...

Some of our final instructions to our son Nic as we left the homestead and headed for the airport had to do with the garden. We have many vegetables and fruit on the vine, and we have watched them grow with the joy that comes from seeing something we did bearing fruit. It has been a bit difficult to know that we would be away when many of the tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, watermelon and cantaloupe would be ready to be picked... to be harvested. We just hope that Nic will be aware of when the best time to harvest the various items will be. It is his first time to be involved in a garden, you know.

Many times in the spiritual world we are also called away from "our work" before the fruit is fully ready to be harvested and we need to trust others to complete the task. This can be very difficult, especially if we have taken ownership of our little spiritual garden.

It's good to be reminded that it is God's garden and we are His workers, not the owners of the plot. The Apostle Paul put it this way in 1 Corinthians 3: "What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe-as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building."

This is a very hard lesson to learn for many of us, and when God moves us out of one place and into another we can tend to resist and argue with Him. The reality is that when we are trying to stay in the place God wants us to leave, we are no longer doing our "ministry" for Him, but for ourselves.

Let someone else harvest the fruit of your hard work? Why not? It may be time to move on and plant another garden.



Legacy

The other day we were watching a baseball game – the first time Gwen and I have done that in decades – and a commercial came on that really resonated with us. In short, it was about a nurse instructor who was saving lives all over the country. It wasn’t that she was present herself at each of these places, but because of the students she had impacted through her training she played a part. This portrayal was a stirring call towards a career that would make a difference in other’s lives - now and into the future. It was a portrait of discipleship and multiplication.

We, like this nursing instructor, are to impact the future for Christ by the way we engage with people in the present.  When we interact with other believers, whether they are missionaries, pastors, ministry leaders, businessmen, teachers, mothers & fathers, or whoever it might be, our desire is not just to be an immediate catalyst for change and maturity in their own lives, but that they in turn will be catalysts for change and maturity in the lives of those they intersect with.  In this way, even though we can only be in one place at any given time, we can actually have a part in what God is doing in other parts of the world through those we have engaged with.

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Whose Coin?

There was a time in my life when I had the responsibility to maintain and file all the income tax reports for our expatriate staff in Sri Lanka. That meant that each year I had to be sure all the forms were filled in and the payments submitted accordingly. This was not in itself a difficult job – the system was simple and the calculations straight forward. It was a bit tedious though, since the forms were long and had to be filled out by hand. A mistake would require that an entire form be redone.

Part of this responsibility also meant that when a staff member was scheduled to leave the country for the final departure we had to go down to the Inland Revenue Department and get a certification that they had paid all their taxes. This was where things got really interesting! Because f the needed security, it took a long time to even get into the building. (Good preparation for current experiences with the TSA folk!) The Sri Lanka Inland Revenue occupied one of the taller buildings in Colombo; one of those buildings of indeterminate age and classification, but which appeared to never have been finished before the repairs needed to be started.

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