REFLECTIONS
August 28, 2005
 
 
Go into all the world…
Mark 16:15
 
 
Going into the Mission Field
 
John was a successful lawyer. In fact he was the head of the firm that had been established two generations earlier. But one day John felt and answered a call. He resigned from his law firm and walked away from a financially successful life into the struggling life of a seminarian. After several years of study, he emerged as an ordained minister of the church.
Now John is not the first to leave a thriving career to answer a call. We are all called by God, but the call does not always ask us to leave anything. However, the call always takes us into the mission field. Think about Moses. He was called to the mission field and the mission was to lead God’s people to freedom and to the land God had promised them. Paul and Barnabas were called into the mission field, as were the other Apostles before them, and as were Timothy and Titus, Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa. All of these left home with the mission to spread the good news around the world.
The world however includes much more than the remote places in third world countries. The world also consists of the common places—like right where you are right now; and the world does not come around only on Sunday morning or after 5:00.on weekdays The world is 24/7 and it includes right where you are. So, when the Master instructed us to “go” it does not mean we have a long trip before us for arrival at some upcoming point in time. 
God placed us right where we are right now. Tomorrow or even later today He may call us to be somewhere else, but in the meantime our missions are here and they are now. Sometimes though our concern is not so much about going into the mission field as it is understanding what the mission is.
Paul explains that we are all a part of the body of Christ with different gifts. Our missions involve the use of our giftedness—doing what God equipped us to do. That means there will be a few like lawyer John that will be called to use giftedness as part of the clergy, but most of us will be called to ordinary things like teaching, or healing, or serving, or encouraging, or leading, or contributing to the needs of others. Going into the mission field calls us to use our giftedness to allow Christ to shine through us where we are—and always now. That’s when…
 
“You are the light of the world,”
Richard Ì


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