A Letter to MKs Around the Globe

Yesterday, I was left home with my brother while Mom and Mary Hannah took the little guys to a birthday party. If you know anything about our family, you can probably guess that an event like this is usually a celebration of music– music as loud as you want it because no one will mind. We’d been left with a few chores to do, so I figured I’d set up my speaker downstairs. Then I remembered a wonderful application of science that my dad taught me on the roof of our house in Nepal.

The ingredients? One iPod, one speaker, and one regulation size Rubbermaid Action Packer. Simply remove the lid from the Action Packer, set the box on its side, place the speaker atop its lovely plastic form, and voila! A brilliant application of resonance resulting in amplified bass. (All of the teens reading this just perked up their ears, and might have just re-read the last paragraph.)

But in order to obtain all of the ingredients, I would have to empty my Action Packer of the 5 or 10 things still in it. No big deal. I started pulling things out– the turtle puppet that wasn’t supposed to come with us in the first place, the mouse puppet stuffed inside it to save space, the 3D puzzle, my alpaca wool gloves (thanks, Mom!), and then…

A small, purple notebook.

Oh, boy.

Suddenly, Nepal hurt all over again.

 

It’s not much to look at: purple, recycled paper, a picture of Sagamartha (Mt. Everest), on the cover, and 1 Peter 5:7 above that. The verse is missing the word for, and it simply says Peter, omitting the number one, but… it’s a bundle of emotional pain. This notebook was given to me on November 21, 2014– the day we left– by my sister, Babita. Inside it was tucked a letter that she told me not to read until I was on the plane. I didn’t get to read that until we reached Doha, Qatar. There, in the hours that are only morning in technicality, next to a giant bronze statue of a man, with the rest of my family dozing around me (I never sleep while traveling), I gently unfolded the letter and started reading.

“I love you and all of you so much,” she said, “but I know who is in control of everything.” I think I cried at this point, but I’m not sure. My memory of it is a little fuzzy. She went on, “And nothing is impossible for him. So, I trust him. So, trust him and always trust him, my brother. Even though it seems hard to understand what He is doing right now, we all will someday.”

Babita, if only you knew how hard that is. How much I wish I had the simple faith to say in the words of our pastor, “God’s got this.” How badly I want His will to be mine and not the other way around. How much I miss you. How desperately I want to be with you right now. How my heart jumped when I heard you were safe after the earthquakes. How hard this is for me to accept.

I’d like to say that I’m man enough to admit it, though I’m not a man yet. But I’ll at least admit it: I fought God tooth and nail over leaving Nepal. Thinking back on it now, I acted like a two-year-old spiritually. I didn’t give in until I was looking out the window of the plane at the Himalayas, watching home gradually shrink behind us.

That was it. I shoved the note back in the pages, and didn’t touch it until the middle of January, almost two months later. It hurt too badly. When I opened it again, I found another note she’d left me, this one written on the inside cover. “Be strong in the Lord,” Babita said, “Even though everything seems impossible.” And in a postscript, “I will be praying for you till we meet again.”

The same simple faith. She had no doubt that we would meet again. She had no doubt that this was God’s will. And she accepted it far before I did. Babita, I envy you of your faith, the faith to say in your letter, “God has a wonderful plan for your life, because He has said it.” It reminds me of Psalm 22:31, in which David says, “They will come and will declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, because He has performed it.” (Psalms 22:31, NASB.) Why are we telling the next generation what the Lord has done? Because He has done it. Why should I believe that God has a plan for me, and that this is part of it? Because He has said it. I have had to learn that the hard way.

So great, I’ve accepted it.

Now what?

I’d like to suggest to all of you MKs who have been uprooted, whether to the mission field or away from it, that we follow the example of Abraham. Where God told him to stop, Abraham stopped, pitched his tents, and set up life as normal. He bloomed where he was planted by the Master Gardener. Let’s start life as normal. Live. Let’s not forget what we’ve been through, but let’s also not forget that this is God’s plan– He has something for us here, right now. And it might not be something we get to see. Maybe all it is, is that someone else who is struggling will see us standing firm in our faith. Maybe we’ll give them the strength to carry on. Maybe we’ll see it. Maybe we won’t. But try to step out and live a bit. If we’re moping in a corner, we’re not presenting ourselves to the Lord for use. We’re not saying, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8b, NASB.) I love the story of Isaiah’s calling because of the simplicity. God expresses a need for a prophet, and I can picture Isaiah looking around, saying, “Well… I don’t see anyone else around… How ‘bout me, God?” He sees the gap and takes a shot at filling it.

In the same way, I love Amos, not because of his calling, but because of what I feel he did once he finished delivering God’s message. He was by his own words, “a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs.” (Amos 7:14b, NASB.) He was a shepherd and a farmer. God said go prophecy, so he did it. And I think that once he was done, he went right back to just that. He was a simple man. He wanted life as normal.

“But, Mathaus, wait!” you’re saying, “Normal is totally different for me!” You’re right. In those same science lessons with Dad on the roof, we talked about how an object’s speed looks different from various distances. A jet moving at 540 MPH looks like it’s crawling across the sky from the ground, but it would appear to shoot by you if you were somehow up in the sky next to it. This is called your Frame of Reference. Speed’s appearance is relative to your frame of reference. The jet is moving at a snail’s pace across the sky because you can see the rest of the sky in comparison. In the same way, normal is dependent on your frame of reference, and your past experiences define your frame of reference. Your normal is different from mine. My normal is different from the President’s. The President’s normal is different from that of the monarch of Great Britain. Normal is relative.

So let’s find our normal. Let’s find it and settle into it. And wait for God’s direction. Let’s see where He takes us. Just remember that God is in control, and this is all part of his plan. It took me too long to figure that out, and I want to save all of the rest of us from the wasted time and heartache.

Let’s go out and live.