Missions

Well, I only had one taker for my psalm of the week. I'm not giving up, though! I think the thing I miss the most about working on my master's degree is reading Scripture and/or books and the discussion that follows. I hoped posting a psalm each week might fill some of that void. I'm also in a book club but I like to think before I speak and by the time my words are formed the conversation has moved on to the next subject. I really love to read but almost need a reason to read something deep and challenging. It's so much easier to pick up fiction. Especially in summer -- to me, summer days are made for reading fiction.

I received a magazine from my seminary the other day that had an ad for their missions degree. Students can take a semester on the mission field and have it count for course credit. The time is way past in my life that I would be able to go on a long-term mission assignment. After about 10 days I'm ready to come home. My heart is for missions, however. I'm Southern Baptist to the core -- we grew up learning about missions. Now, I not only want to be involved myself, I really like to see people and read about people involved in missions.

If you saw my last post maybe you read the comment left by Kathy W. Her daughter amazes me. She just graduated from high school and is gone overseas for a month doing mission work. She felt God calling her to go, she got the information, raised the money and went. I wasn't near as brave as that when I was her age. Another young friend of ours is doing a 2-year assignment in Africa. I'm going to take a group over to work with her in January -- I'm really excited about that.

God has called us, yes all of us who are believers and followers, to be on mission. Our pastor is challenging all of the members of our church to be on mission this year. There are countless opportunities all around us, here in our community. We don't all have to go to Africa or India or even to another state. In fact, the nations are here. Just look around our community (or yours, if you don't live here) and see the many different nationalities and cultures represented. Psalm 67 is about God being worshipped and known by people from all the nations.

How will they know unless someone tells them? How will they worship unless someone shows them how? The harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few.

Serving the King,

Jeanette