Vivienne Stacey Scholarship

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Vivienne Stacey studied English at University College London then spent some years as a teacher before joining Interserve in 1954. When she learned that the United Bible Training Centre (UBTC) in Gujranwala trained Pakistani women for their witness among Muslims, she requested that as her place of ministry. From the very beginning of her mission career she was committed to equipping local people to engage in ministry among Muslims in their own context.

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Established to honour this innovative pioneer, the Vivienne Stacey Scholarship is for equipping Christian women scholar-practitioners from Middle East, Africa and Asia to engage with the Muslim world. It follows Vivienne’s heart to see women, including those coming from a Muslim background, trained, equipped and engaged in ministry.

Soon after her arrival in Pakistan, Vivienne and Esther John became firm friends. Esther was born in a Muslim family but had become a follower of Jesus through seeing the love of Jesus lived out in her Christian school and through the study of scripture. She went to UBTC in 1957 from where she and Vivienne visited homes in the surrounding villages, sharing the story of Jesus. Esther went on to minister in other parts of Pakistan; she was murdered in 1960, becoming the first of many martyrs that Vivienne knew.

Vivienne was a much-loved friend, mentor and example. She worked with the Community Development Team from Multan Christian Women’s hospital, training them in outreach and setting assignments individually tailored to areas where each member of the team needed to grow. Vivienne challenged them to find ways of integrating what they learned into their work. The full impact of her commitment to that little community development team was immeasurable.

Vivienne encouraged many to scholarly practice – in Interserve and other organisations, in local churches in the countries where she worked, and right across the globe. She formed a study group in Pakistan that gave many their first foot into research and writing on significant ministry issues for working among Muslims.

Ida Glasser, now Director of the Centre for Muslim Christian Studies in Oxford, wrote about her experience of Vivienne’s support as she pursued her PhD:

The great thing Vivienne did for me was to take me out for lunch when I was struggling towards my PhD, and then to ask whether money might help. She then (probably through a trust of which she was senior trustee) provided enough to pay Crosslinks for I think half my time for 3 months, so that I could break the back of the writing up. I might never have completed it otherwise. Another time, after a conference in Holland, she treated me to a day in Amsterdam – took me on a canal trip and gave me a good dinner – things I’d never have done for myself, or been able to afford.

The Scholarship does not just provide financial support. It is also committed to providing mentoring, both individually and as part of a learning cohort; to investing in the development of the whole person as they pursue their studies.

The Vivienne Stacey Scholarship Fund was launched during the When Women Speak… colloquium on 25 September 2015. It is actively seeking partnership with academic institutions in Asia and the Middle East, and in the West, as it builds capacity to support these women. Please join us in supporting the fund. You can do this through your local Interserve Office, marking your gift ‘Vivienne Stacey Scholarship’, or by clicking on ‘donate’ at www.whenwomenspeak.net For further information contact admin@whenwomenspeak.net or cathy@whenwomenspeak.net

 

 

Touring God’s Unfolding Grace

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In some ways, touring around Australia for the Unfolding Grace tour has been similar to touring around Asia and the Arab World, collecting the stories for The Plum Tree in the Desert! Except, of course, that in Australia, I didn’t have to check for cobras in the bed, or translate ‘mushrooms’ into Kyrgyz, or dance with Tibetans in western China.

At the end of 2012, Paul Bendor-Samuel (previous International Director) asked me if I would like to write a book for Interserve, telling stories of faith and mission through the eyes of Interserve Partners. I said yes, fairly quickly, because I knew that it was a privilege (and it included all my favourite things – people, places, stories, mission). But I also said yes because it was good timing for me. Darren and I had been feeling empty for some months following the loss of our friend and former Interserve Partner Peter Lack. I knew I needed to hear again the stories of God’s grace and enabling, especially from people who had been through struggles. And that was certainly the case with Interserve Partners.

During my visits with them, the Partners described living through bombings, health epidemics, near rapes, rocket attacks, being held at gunpoint, seeing death in the raw, being forced to leave the country, and more. But more than that, they talked to me about the grace and mercy of God. They said that it’s God who keeps them going, even when the men are barging through the door. Even then, they said, God is still God and we can trust him… and we’re all sinners and hopeless, and we’re hopelessly loved.

Collecting the stories was a privilege. But so was the book tour. I loved meeting people in Sydney, Canberra, Perth, Brisbane, Launceston, Melbourne and Adelaide! It was a reminder to me that wherever we are, we’re struggling. It might not be rocket attacks here in Australia, but that doesn’t mean we’re not weighed down by depression, or serious illness, or fraught relationships, or financial stress, or something much worse. Here in Australia, we also put our trust in the same grace and mercy of God.

I met a man in Melbourne who spent 30 years teaching accounting at university and then he had a debilitating stroke and felt useless. He couldn’t do what he’d been trained to do. But today, he said, he doesn’t give up because God enables him to keep going, Then there was a 90-year-old lady in Sydney who said she’d been to every Interserve conference for as long as she could remember, praying for the Partners… and she doesn’t want to stop now. Then there was a couple in Perth who were originally from Sri Lanka. They lived through the race riots of 1985 and lost everything. They managed to come to Australia and their daughter studied medicine. She went back to Asia, serving with Interserve, and the couple became involved in the only Tamil-speaking church in WA. Perhaps ‘everything’ wasn’t actually everything, after all. Then there was a man in Singapore, who said thank you. He said that wherever we are, we need to hear again the stories of God at work. He said, there’s a danger if we stay in one small place or one small church, we can start to think that our God is very small. And he isn’t.

That’s true! I want to thank everyone who was a part of the Unfolding Grace tour. It reminded me that we are part of a rich community of believers who love Jesus, and together we are responding to his grace in a thousand different ways. Sometimes it might feel like we’re alone, in a small home end office, or a church that doesn’t fully support cross-cultural mission, or maybe a secular work place, where challenges are ongoing and daily. But be encouraged! In the middle of our hard times, we can catch each other’s eye, and nod, and keep going, because we put our trust in the One who has loved us more than we can ever imagine and who has begun a good work in us. It’s him who will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ.

“So we’re not giving up! How could we? Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace.” (2 Corinthians 4:16, MSG)

Thank you!

With love from Naomi 

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Touching the Unclean

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Even though Paul referred to Christ’s followers as saints, at least in western cultures we shy away from using the word.  It is only used by those in high church traditions for those historic figures whom the Church deemed worthy of special recognition. Yet, Paul uses the term for every follower of Christ. Now, please do not get me wrong. I do not advocate that we start using the term – that would be weird. However, I do think it is advantageous to unearth what Paul might have meant when he used the term.

What does the word “saint” or “holy one” mean?

In the last part of Mark Chapter 1 we see a leper come to Jesus. The leper said: “If you want to, you can make me clean.” We read that Jesus was immediately filled with compassion. In response Jesus stretched out his hand, touched the man, and said, “I want to. Be clean!”

Mark presents us with this event so we can think about who Jesus is and what this miracle signified.

In the Old Testament when someone touched a leper, they became unclean. Yet, contrary to this OT expectation, when Jesus touched the leper, the leper became clean. In this we discover who Jesus is. He is the Holy One who makes the unclean clean.

John the Apostle saw this and said in 1 Jn 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Yet, Paul discovered something else as well. After the cross Jesus took all this to a higher level. He doesn’t just make the unclean clean; he makes the unclean holy.

This is why Paul uses the word “saints” (or “holy ones”) when he writes to Jesus’ followers. The Holy One does not just touch us making us clean – he comes to live in each and every one of us – making us holy.

I can’t even begin to fathom what all this implies. I simply put it out there for us to meditate on as we go through our week. I pray that as we go through this week – may He fill us with a deeper sense of His presence with us, a deeper sense of his life within us, and a deeper revelation of what all this means for us personally. And may we discover what this means as we go into the world, into His world, as his holy representatives…

Pray, Give, Go… But what’s the deal with hot showers?

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We’ve been back from Nepal for a few years now and I’m still really enjoying hot showers! Every day I hop in there under the water and thank God for such a wonderful thing. And then sometimes (while I’m in there) I think about our struggles in the West… which seem quite different to the struggles of Christians in the majority world.

It seems that the more I travel around churches in this country, the more I realize how good we are at getting the externals right. Maybe it’s precisely because of the hot showers (and the hair dryers and the clothes and the latest products from the pharmacy) but we seem to be really good at creating an external appearance of looking okay. And then once we’re all clean and nice on the outside… we’re all set for church.

And then, not only that, but when we arrive at church, we become very skilled at putting on Christian veneer. We use a nice tone of voice while we set up the microphones or the chairs or the coffee cups. We greet the newcomers pleasantly. Then we speak in a measured and smooth way to God during corporate prayer times, to the point that we can even fake our relationship with Him. But a few hours later, when we’re alone with Him, we have nothing to say.

And this week I was reading again from 2 Corinthians 4:7. “We have this treasure (the gospel) in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

It struck me again that our goal is not to be the most beautifully decorated jar but to hold the treasure. In Nepal they don’t tend to use banks, so they keep their treasures in a tin box under the bed. The tin box itself is not important, it’s not even attractive to look at – more often it’s covered in dents and marks because the tin is so weak. But what it holds is very important. And maybe here in the West, we also need to keep reminding ourselves of what’s important in our lives… it’s the message inside us.

Maybe the problem is that the more we focus on the externals, the more we neglect what’s inside. And because we’re so good at getting the outside right, we can fail to see what lumps of clay we actually are, dented with bitterness and coldness and complaints and insecurities. But God has done something amazing… He’s made us new, given us life forever through the death of His son. And not only that! He’s actually choosing to work through us, even through our lumps of ‘baked dirt’ – to show that this all-surpassing power is from Him and not from us.

In the leprosy hospital in Pokhara, some of the most devout people were the most deformed. They were the ones who had come too late, whose fingers were already gone and there were no tendons to reconnect. They didn’t look good on the outside but they contained the treasure. We’re not called to be the treasure. We’re called to contain the treasure. And maybe we need to learn from those who are less together externally so that we too can display the incredible treasure of the gospel.

 

NaomiReed

Naomi Reed is a former Interserve Partner. She is also a bestselling author and gifted speaker. Her latest book, The Plum Tree in the Desert shares stories of faith and mission from Interserve Partners over the last 25 years. Naomi is also speaking on the Australia-wide Unfolding Grace tour. For more information, see Unfolding Grace.

Pray, Give, Go… But is there such a thing as time off?

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I remember reading Psalm 143 while we were in Nepal, “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”

It struck me mainly because I was missing level ground. We lived in the middle hills of the Himalayas, so if we walked up from our house there was a forested mountain and if we walked down from our house, there were terraced valleys and then 27,000 foot Himalayan peaks on the other side. And that meant that if we wanted to go anywhere, anytime, it was either steeply uphill or steeply downhill. There wasn’t very much level ground.

This week I’ve been thinking about taking ‘time-off’ and it strikes me again that it’s such a western concept. When we lived with a Nepali family during our early years in Nepal, I remember having a conversation with our Amma (mother), who was then 64 years old. She told me that she hadn’t had a day off since she married Ba at 8 years old. I remember staring at her uncomprehending and trying to work out the Maths. That was 56 years without a break, I thought. Imagine working for 56 years straight, without a break – milking the buffaloes, digging the fields by hand, harvesting the rice, cutting the grass for the buffaloes, making yogurt and buttermilk, as well as cooking for the extended family and growing vegetables for the curry. Wasn’t she tired? I thought. Didn’t she long for a holiday? But when I tried to ask her that, she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. She hardly even knew the word. Where would they go, she asked? And who would feed the buffalo, if they did go? And perhaps we should just have another cup of chiya, she said.

So we drank more chiya and years later the conversation came back to me while I was talking to my friend Srijana in Dhulikhel. She described her daily work collecting water for the family and wood for the fire. It was very hard labour, she said, so for her, a break was to come to our house and cut the grass for her buffalo. It was almost pleasant, she said, swinging the scythe back and forth across our terraces and chatting to me. It was so much easier than carrying 30kg of wood across the mountains to her mud house. And I looked at her small frame as well as the sun setting over the Himalayas and was inclined to agree with her. We were certainly having a pleasant late afternoon but how did she manage, day in and day out? And what if it were me, in her shoes? It made me realize over time that for many Nepalis (especially rural women), taking time off meant merely doing a different version of what they normally do. It was still ‘work’, but it was a change in the physical effort or mental effort or the company or the location in which they did it in.

And that thought returned to me this week. I’ve just come back from a busy speaking weekend in Brisbane and Evan’s Head and I loved it. I felt re-energised and incredibly privileged to be able to speak of God’s love and plan for his people in a variety of settings. But on Monday morning, I wondered whether I should take time off? What was the opposite to my work? I wondered. I’d already been able to spend time in prayer and God’s word and in fellowship with others. I’d enjoyed returning to my family and connecting with them. So how was I going to spend Monday morning? The thought confused me for a while until I realized that it was tied up with the way I saw myself and what I was really doing. If we primarily see ourselves as children of God who use every opportunity to point to his love and respond to his love, then taking ‘time-off’ can’t really be the opposite of that. Perhaps instead, it will be more like the Nepali version – the setting changes or the company changes, but in essence we remain the same, alive on this earth to love God and to love his people in whatever way we can and with whatever opportunities and gifts he’s given us. Let’s keep doing that!

 

NaomiReed

Naomi Reed is a former Interserve Partner. She is also a bestselling author and gifted speaker. Her latest book, The Plum Tree in the Desert shares stories of faith and mission from Interserve Partners over the last 25 years. Naomi is also speaking on the Australia-wide Unfolding Grace tour. For more information, see Unfolding Grace.

Pray, Give, Go… But how do I know when it’s time to come home?

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I personally think that the decision to come home is a much harder one than the decision to go in the first place. It’s often fraught with uncertainties and dilemmas and guilt and confusion (as well as peace!).

For us, making the decision to ‘go’ seemed easy. It was 1992 and we were newly married and trained as physiotherapists. We heard about the physical and spiritual needs in Nepal and the question became… not – ‘should we go?’ but, ‘how could we not go?’ How could we stay here, working at a Sydney hospital (where there were 50 physios), when there were two physios in Nepal for a population of 20 million? How was that good use of the gifts and skills that God had given us? And how could we sit here in our comfortable church lapping up more and more Bible teaching when there were churches in Nepal where everybody was brand new in their faith? Nobody had been to Bible College. How was that an accountable use of the gifts of encouragement that God had given us? It was obvious. How could we not go?

But the decision to come home was very hard. Both times! First of all, we came home unexpectedly in 1996 and then we came home (expectantly!) in 2006. But both decisions were very hard. And I think it’s because by then we had a profound and deeply personal understanding of the needs in the place where we were. The needs that had once been quotable statistics (back in Australia) had become our friends, our community and our life. The patients and the students and the deaf man down the street and the lady selling bananas… they all had names and we loved them. We knew what made our students laugh and we agonized with them when their homes were bombed and their buffalo died. The women at church were my prayer partners and I cried with them when the roads closed and the rice ran out. The children who ate our left over mango skins were not just pictures in a magazine. They were our neighbours.

And in deciding to come home, we had to weigh all of that up with the perceived needs of our own family. Stephen was 11 and ready for high school. All of the boys (let alone us!) had lost touch with Australia and no longer thought of it as home. We felt the time was right to reconnect. But it’s never that easy. What about the work in Nepal? Could we wait for another year… or two? And who would take our place? And would waiting another year make any difference in the long run? It’s the sort of decision that weighs heavily when you’re on the field. And if I had an easy answer, I’d tell you! This month, why don’t we pray for long-term missionaries who are considering returning to their home country. Pray for wisdom and guidance and peace… most of all, pray for peace.

 

NaomiReed

Naomi Reed is a former Interserve Partner. She is also a bestselling author and gifted speaker. Her latest book, The Plum Tree in the Desert shares stories of faith and mission from Interserve Partners over the last 25 years. Naomi is also speaking on the Australia-wide Unfolding Grace tour. For more information, see Unfolding Grace.

Pray, Give, Go… But what about my health issues?

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It would be so much easier if all questions had yes or no answers. Every time our kids said ‘MUM, can I…’, we could just call out the yes or no answer very loudly and confidently and then go back to whatever else we were doing, without thinking about qualifications and moderations and thousands of shades of grey. Not only would it make school holidays easier but it would also mean I could confidently reply to the people I meet through Missions Interlink. These days I go to quite a few debrief days and training sessions and people ask me things like,

“Will I go crazy if I have to home school in Arnhem Land?”
“Do you think living in Nepal will aggravate my skin condition?”
“Will I clash with other personality types while serving in PNG?”
“Do you think I’m more likely to struggle with depression while I’m living in Africa?”
“Is it irresponsible to take our child with special needs to a developing country?”

Actually, I can’t think of a question I’ve been asked recently that was easy… or that had a yes/no answer… or that I answered without lots of qualifications and thoughtful pauses. And that’s probably good! But lately the hardest questions have been the ones to do with health issues, both physical and mental. I feel like I don’t have the answers and I also carry a weight of responsibility. What if I tell them everything will be fine and then it goes badly wrong!

The good news is that most mission agencies require candidates to undergo physical and psychological examinations before they’re accepted by the mission. The tests are extensive and often not only produce yes/no answers but also recommended preparation before the candidate leaves. Sometimes people need to participate in conflict management courses or work on a healthier height/ weight ratio or access medical resources or operations that aren’t available in their adopted country. For example, in 2002 I needed to have a minor heart operation before we were allowed to return to Nepal. And that turned out to be a very good thing. Friends of ours needed to access certain medications and do short courses. But it’s not always clear. And sometimes the answer is no. The medical condition is deemed to be too great a risk and the person who has a heart for Mozambique and a conviction to pray, is told that the very best place to do that is in Australia.

But then at other times, even the professionals don’t have the answers. They can’t reassure us because they don’t know what’s up ahead. They don’t know what will happen. And that’s when we cry out to God in prayer – who not only hears us, but also knows every answer… to every question we ever had. He already knows the way he’ll enable us during home school and give us grace to deal with the skin irritation and renew our spirits as we hope in him, through each new season, in each new country. And as we pray, we realize again that within God’s sovereignty and saving grace, there’s (staggeringly) no such thing as something going ‘badly wrong’. It might look awful and feel awful and everything in us might scream at the circumstance but even then, somehow, God is allowing what he hates to achieve what he loves. And that’s an answer that I’m going to keep repeating to myself, no matter what country I’m in.

 

NaomiReed

Naomi Reed is a former Interserve Partner. She is also a bestselling author and gifted speaker. Her latest book, The Plum Tree in the Desert shares stories of faith and mission from Interserve Partners over the last 25 years. Naomi is also speaking on the Australia-wide Unfolding Grace tour. For more information, see Unfolding Grace.

Pray, Give, Go… But what if I’m too old?

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I was talking with someone recently about the needs for cross-cultural workers in Asia and the Middle East. The lady was in her sixties and she had a real heart for mission. She agreed with me about the needs overseas and she and her husband were at a stage of life where they could go. But she looked at me sadly. “You see, I’m just too old now,” she said. “My body is old and my mind is old. I can’t remember things like I used to. I can’t even remember what I was going to tell you just now. I’d never be able to learn the language.”

“Oh no!” I said. “Never think that. You’re never too old for language learning. It might be a different process, but if God is leading you to cross-cultural ministry, you’re never too old for Him to use you.”

“Sure,” she said. “Tell me how many people you know who’ve actually gone to the mission field in their sixties and then learnt the language really well.”

“I know loads of them!” I said confidently. And then, as always happens, when I make sweeping statements, I wracked my brain and couldn’t come up with any! I tried really hard but realized that many of the older missionaries I knew (with good language) had actually been in their adopted country for 20 years or more.

She smiled at me. “See!” she said. “You don’t know any.”

“Well, maybe I don’t,” I replied. “But I know something better than that. I know couples in their sixties and seventies who have gone to the field after their retirement and they’ve known how to love. They’ve known how to serve. They’ve known how to just sit and be still with needy local people. And because they’ve known those things, they’ve used their vocabulary and their back-to-front grammar to love people in the name of Jesus. And because they’ve loved people, I also know of loads of Nepalis who have come to faith or been encouraged by their witness.”

The thing is, no matter how old we are, there’s a reason not to go. In our twenties, we’re not fully qualified yet, or we haven’t found our life partner or we need more time at Bible college. And then in our thirties, we have issues with pregnancy or childbirth or paying off the mortgage. Sometimes we’re so absorbed by small children that we have little time for local relationships and language. And then by the time we’re in our forties, our children need secondary education and we need to return to our home country. Then, not long after that, our own parents begin to age and need our assistance. And so it goes on. There’s problems with superannuation and retirement funds and grandchildren. There’s always something!

Maybe, instead of dwelling on the problems, we should keep reminding ourselves of what is at stake. Why am I choosing to live and minister where I am? What are the needs and the resources in the place where I am? What skills and gifts has God given me and in what ways am I being accountable with those gifts? Could He be leading me to use those gifts elsewhere, where the workers are much fewer? Syria for example has a similar population to Australia and yet has only a few dozen cross-cultural Christian workers. It’s the same in Iraq and Yemen and Uzbekistan and many other countries. Every day fifty thousand people die amongst the unreached people groups of our world, without ever having heard of Jesus. And we sit and worry about our grey hairs and reading glasses.

Maybe the question is not how old we are, but how faithful we are with the message and the gifts that God has given us. If He’s leading us to pray or to give or to go to needy places in the world (or Australia), He’ll also give us what we need to serve Him there. And perhaps that’s the best thing about actually growing older! God slowly transforms us into people who can’t help but share His message of love and forgiveness.

 

NaomiReed

Naomi Reed is a former Interserve Partner. She is also a bestselling author and gifted speaker. Her latest book, The Plum Tree in the Desert shares stories of faith and mission from Interserve Partners over the last 25 years. Naomi is also speaking on the Australia-wide Unfolding Grace tour. For more information, see Unfolding Grace.

Pray, Give, Go… But what’s so hard about re-entry?

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After six months in Australia, I had re-learnt how to swipe my credit card and put petrol in the car. I had begun to read Australian newspapers without being horrified by the way that scandal and gossip were newsworthy. I had stopped jumping at the sound of loud noises – telling myself that it probably wasn’t a bomb. I had begun to adjust to the predictability of a society that didn’t call strikes every second day. But we still missed Nepal. Our friends started to say, “You must be feeling really settled.” “The boys look like they’re doing well.” “It must be nice to be home again.”

But the problem was… it didn’t feel like home. After so many years in Nepal, I’d look out at the gum trees that had replaced our Himalayan view and try to catch a glimpse of something (anything!) that would tell me I was home. I looked at the house and the streets of Blaxland and the school and the church and I remembered them. I remembered the way we used to play at the oval and the route we walked to church. I remembered where we used to keep the glad wrap and how the dust would collect in the corner of the pantry. But did that mean I was home?

And if it didn’t… what did it mean for me to be home? I knew I was still missing Nepal, so I looked to the rest of my family, to see if they were feeling the same way. Jeremy said that he didn’t want to move countries again. He was worried that some of his treasures wouldn’t fit back in the barrels. Christopher had reinvented himself as one of the small boys that chased the soccer ball every lunch time. He didn’t want to talk about Nepal.

Stephen had more time to reflect and acknowledged the tension within him. “It’s not just one thing I miss,” he said. “It’s everything. It’s bus trips to Kathmandu and sleep-overs with friends and INF conferences and monsoonal floods and…” He paused and fiddled with his bedspread. “It’s the way that we always had something big to look forward to in Nepal. Everything about our lives was special there and everything had a purpose. It joined together. We had friends who shared all of that and that made them more real. We don’t have that here.”

My eyes began to mist over as I nodded and agreed with him. It was all about purposefulness. Our years in Nepal were marked by deliberateness of life and ministry. Darren and I knew that God had called us there with a specific purpose in mind. We shared that purpose with the wider mission community and that gave us a unique fellowship.

And that was when I began to wonder whether for me, home was purpose. At about that time, a friend visited and encouraged me to draw a picture of our new community and purpose in living in Australia. Somebody else sat down with Darren and talked about seeing his work at Sydney University as being ministry.

Then, some months later we went to a re-entry retreat and listened to other stories. A doctor who had served in Tanzania said, “Being a missionary doctor has been my dream ever since I was a kid. But now I’m home, and for the first time, I don’t have a dream.” It felt similar for all of us. But at the end of the weekend we sat in a circle and someone read from Psalm 139:1-10.

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down… You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand on me… Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

There was silence in the room as we let the words wash over us. Always before, we’d imagined that the far side of the sea was in Kenya and Bolivia, PNG and Nepal, all the places where he’d held us. And now suddenly, in the silence, the far side of the sea was where we were now – Australia – the place where he still held us, the place where we dwelt in him, and the place where he would use us. More than anything, that’s what we needed to know.

And that’s the challenge for all of us, wherever we are… to understand that God not only holds us in his hands but he has reasons and purpose for us in being there.

 

NaomiReed

Naomi Reed is a former Interserve Partner. She is also a bestselling author and gifted speaker. Her latest book, The Plum Tree in the Desert shares stories of faith and mission from Interserve Partners over the last 25 years. Naomi is also speaking on the Australia-wide Unfolding Grace tour. For more information, see Unfolding Grace.

Pray, Give, Go… But what about our children?

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It’s the question that keeps us awake at three in the morning. God might be leading us to Mongolia or Iraq, Nepal or Kazakhstan… but what about our children? How will they cope? Will they make any friends? What if they get sick? Will they turn out alright? And we try and reassure ourselves with the thought that, ‘If God calls one, then he calls the whole family’ but as we drift back to sleep a more frightening thought stirs at the back of our mind. ‘What if something terrible happens to one of them?’ and then, ‘Will I ever be able to live with myself?’

Wherever we are, we worry about our children. We worry about their friends and their education and their attitudes and their behaviour. But there’s a certain increase in anxiety when we consider taking them into third world countries, especially to places with civil unrest, physical challenges and unfamiliar customs. We find ourselves losing sleep, developing guilt complexes and then looking to others for some reassurances. Happily, most of the books on Third Culture Kids (TCK’s) tell us that the children of missionaries turn out to be adaptable and empathetic adults with a highly developed world view. Returned missionaries also tell us that their children loved their years in Mongolia, Iraq, Nepal and Kazakhstan and in fact, they can’t wait to go back.

But the questions still sit there in the dead of night for us. What about my children? Will they be okay? Unfortunately, of course, there isn’t any answer… just as there isn’t any answer in the event that we stay in Australia. None of us can ensure our children’s faith by sending them to Sunday school and we can’t ensure our children’s wellbeing by keeping them in Australia. All we can do is commit ourselves to loving them, praying for them and making the most of the time that God has given to us to spend with them on this earth, in whatever country that might be. If he leads us to the foreign mission field then that might mean we spend more time ensuring a good water supply and some sturdy contingency plans in the event of ill health or political turmoil. We might spend more time investigating educational options and gathering resources in case we need them. We might spend more time teaching our children about the extraordinary world that God has made for us and then enjoying its diversity on the backs of elephants or in dugout canoes. We might spend more time playing in paddy fields and watching what it means for a local family to grow everything they need to eat… and then give most of it to us. We might spend more time feeling thankful for God’s goodness and growing in the way we put our trust in him.

And then one night in some far distant country, we’ll wake up at three in the morning and smile, knowing profoundly that he, who holds the sparrows, has a plan for our children. He, who numbers the hairs on their heads, also knows what tomorrow holds. And then we’ll slowly lean back on our pillow… and find rest.

 

NaomiReed

Naomi Reed is a former Interserve Partner. She is also a bestselling author and gifted speaker. Her latest book, The Plum Tree in the Desert shares stories of faith and mission from Interserve Partners over the last 25 years. Naomi is also speaking on the Australia-wide Unfolding Grace tour. For more information, see Unfolding Grace.