On one of my first overseas trips, the Lord impressed upon me that visiting and ministering in other countries needs to be a calling from the Lord. I was struck that we were not just going to look at the people in the country as if we were going to look at an exotic animal in a zoo. No, we were being called by God to SEE the people as his beloved creation. Each man, woman and child was created in his image and are spiritually lost unless they confess that Jesus is their Lord. And so over the years, men and women have pulled up the roots of their lives and crossed into strange countries with the goal to share the love and forgiveness of Christ. Today the world we live in is becoming more connected and homogenous and sometimes living overseas does not seem too different from our home cultures. We can buy familiar food, find soap and deodorant of the same brand we use at home and even buy our favorite chocolate. One of the consequences of this is that we stop seeing the needs of the culture around us that we have gone to serve. Recently I wrote to a young friend of mine serving overseas who was experiencing culture shock, saying, “We actually don’t want you to feel at home in your host country. Because the more you are at home there, the less you will see the needs of the people around you, the very ones you have gone to serve.” The more comfortable we are where God has placed us, the less we long for our heavenly home and ignore the needs that are in front of us. May the Lord give us eyes to see the people around us as men and women that he loves and desires to have a relationship with.
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