Daily Devotions: The Road to Africa

My youngest daughter Lauren has just set up her own blog at www.theroadtoafrica.blogspot.com
She is planning to go on a special mission trip this summer to Tanzania in Africa. She’ll spend thirteen weeks working with children who have been orphaned through the AIDS epidemic that has swept through that region. It will be hard work and physically demanding. It will cost a lot of money, but Lauren believes that God is asking her to go, so she doesn’t want to disappoint or disobey Him.
Podcast version here

As a parent, I am both concerned and proud. It’s a major task and one that will almost certainly change her life. As a pastor, I am pleased that she is listening to God and I pray that He will both guide and protect her.

Psalm 22:27 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him.

Her willingness to do missionary work like this reminds me that Christ’s Church reaches all over the world. People in other places, nations, and continents have come to know the Lord and, as the psalmist wrote so long ago, “all the families of the earth bow down before Him.” I would love to be with Lauren as she worships with the Tanzanian people. I would love to experience their joy for the Lord in the midst of such trying and hard circumstances. I think if I did, it would also change my life forever. But this is Lauren’s calling, not mine.

One day in eternity, we are going to gather in heaven and we will see countless numbers of people of different races and cultures cheerfully and joyfully worshipping the Lord. I don’t know what I’ll feel at that point, but I expect that my heart will be bursting with a joy that can only be experienced in heaven. I guess John Newton best summed up the feeling:

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, Than when we’d first begun!”

Prayer: Lord Jesus, all around the world billions of people are praying to You today. They are expressing their concerns and joys, their hopes and fears, their dreams and problems. It is amazing to think that You hear each one and You love them all individually. Help us this day to meet and greet people everywhere as children of God and servants of Your Kingdom. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.