NO SUCH THING

while talking to a friend about the wonders of modern day travel and how transportation now makes the world so small, we thought back to the days of Hudson Taylor and how much faith it would have taken for him to set off to China. my friend made a comment that really made me think. he said, "there was no such thing as a short term mission to Asia." considering that the journey across the ocean was six months in a ship, there definitely weren't short term mission trips. if you were going, you went for good. there was no sort of testing the waters. no thinking that "i'll just be a missionary for a few weeks and come back to my normal life."

before i left for Japan, that's sort of how i was thinking. while i knew that God would change me while i was overseas, i could not anticipate the larger impact it would have on my life. now that i'm back, i realize that i cannot come back to my life as i had left it. God's call for me to be a missionary is a lifelong call. i am His messenger no matter where i go. so what was true for the missionaries of the ages past is also true for me. there is no such thing as a short term mission.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
~Psalm 139:16~