The Heart

Here’s some news that I’m certainly the last to hear:  Being a missionary doesn’t make you a good person.

   

Before moving here, somewhere deep in my subconscious, I think I believed that just through the act of getting on a plane and settling down on the mission field, I’d somehow become a way better version of myself.  I’d grow some wings and a halo, I’d naturally be nicer to people, it would become really easy to talk to others about Jesus, and the temptations that once plagued my life would naturally disappear.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that Melissa-in-Honduras is still Melissa, with all the shortcomings, weaknesses, and attitude problems that I had in the States.  Only here they probably started creeping out more often, simply due to the stresses of cross-cultural adjustment.

Darn!  You mean I’m still self-centered?  And at times kinda lazy?  And (gasp!) even in this ‘developing nation,’ I still struggle with materialism?  Yep, yep, and yep.  Unfortunately.

It has brought to mind so many devotional talks I heard as a kid by former missionaries or missionaries-on-furlough, when they’d say things like, “It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you can serve God,” or, “You don’t have to be a missionary in another country to be sold-out for the Lord.”  Back then, it seemed like they were selling their cool, overseas lives way too short.  But now, I get it.  I really doesn’t matter where you are in the world.  All that matters is your heart.

I can live in the middle-of-nowhere, Africa, as a “missionary,” but if my heart’s not right, it’s pointless.  Likewise, I can live in Anytown, USA, working a “secular” job, with a right-heart, and that’s everything!  A right-heart might look different from person to person, but for me, it means a heart that’s filled with God’s love for me & mine for Him, overflowing onto those around me; my motives are centered on Him, and my attitude reflects that, so that my service is joyful, instead of some resentment-filled duty I’m fulfilling.  And living in Honduras day-to-day, I’ve really had to check myself: that it’s not just the actions I’m doing that look right, but that my heart really is right.

I’m so glad that God has put me in Honduras at this point in my life.  And it’s so comforting to know that - no matter where in the world I might live in the future - what matters to God is my heart...that’s it’s close to His heart and seeking to be ever-closer.

md