Back to Bethel!

Matthew 28:19 tells us to go into the world and make disciples, and that is the Scripture that drives the vision of the work in Mozambique that calls me back to Bethel once again. This lovely little place is where my missionary journey began; where God touched my heart and changed it in ways that altered the focus of my vision in remarkable ways. Nothing looks the same.

Last night, I came home after Portuguese class and, as I walked to the house from the garage, I happened to look up. The stars glittered in the sky as only they can on a crisp fall night, and I was taken back in my memory to the stars of the southern hemisphere as I stood still in Bethel for as long as possible to drink in the night sky and the unfamiliar constellations. It' s the ordinary things that I see differently today. While in Mozambique, I noticed that we snapped pictures of flowers, clouds, beaches, boats, birds, each other~ ordinary things that didn't seem ordinary because we were in Africa. When I came home, I began to look at the beauty of the ordinary things around me as if I had a new sense of sight, and that has not faded in two years. I confess, I was a bit that way before I traveled to Mozambique, but something has shifted in me and I experience a heightened sense of beauty in the ordinary.

Perhaps that is what it means to have the "eyes of God". Perhaps when we can look at ordinary things and see extraordinary beauty and value, we are seeing the world as God sees it. I once heard it said that saints were just ordinary people used by God in extraordinary ways~I believe that is true. If we truly allow God to use us in any way he chooses, we will live extraordinary lives, to be sure.