Called to go.
When Barbara and I were “called” to “go” it was not to a far country. We moved from Louisiana to Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, NC. Shortly, we received a “call” to be student pastor of the Fork Baptist Church in Fork, SC. There we were accepted, loved and cared for by that congregation and community. We received far more than we gave.
Not all “calls” to go are that way. When I was a boy, 6 years old, my Army Dad was assigned to a temporary base on a very small island now belonging to Paupa New Guinea. On the Island, there was a village of natives. They lived in thatched huts, hunted with spears, made ocean trips in outrigger canoes, and lived very primitively. They could remember when they were cannibals. They had been born into this place and lifestyle.
However, living near them was a “missionary family”. They had built a little more substantial house, and wore more clothes, but other than that their lives were not much different. They were German Lutherans who had been “called” to this place and time. They had lived there for years raising a family. Once a year a supply ship arrived from their sponsors in Germany. This was in the late 1940’s and during the WW2 years most of those ships did not arrive. They had no cars, no electricity,, no modern toilet facilities, no other Westerners near them. No others speaking their home language. An empty nest husband and wife alone with one one supply ship a year. They had heard the “call” and “gone”.
Jesus called all his followers “to go” to all of humanity with His message. Our call has always been to pleasant places with congenial people. We have always tried to go. But what if our call had been like Abraham’s to an unknown place, to an unknown people for an unknown period of time with no supply ships?