A missionary ponders God’s faithful, ongoing work all over the world.
Sunday mornings are one of my favourite times of the week.
Mind you, many Sunday mornings seem to find me a little on the teary side.
Perhaps it’s as I think of our home church in Australia which, despite the time difference, is meeting right at that moment. Perhaps it is missing family.
My heart feels the reality of the Body of Christ, meeting all over the world in different settings, but still one in Him.
We join the Banwaon believers here on the split palm floor, pressed in for hours with dense jungles crowding all around.
I hear their voices raised in praise as we sing together, our hearts united before the Father.
I sit in awe as I hear godly Banwaon men exercise their spiritual gift of teaching – bringing out rich truths from the Word, exhorting their own people. I marvel and delight in their depth of insight and ability to expound it.
The other week Bertu finished the teaching with a big smile, saying “Well! It’s been good to meet and to have our ‘batteries’ recharged by the Word of God so we can go out into the week.”
The frustrations and busyness of the past week fade, perspective is regained – “Yes! This is why we’re here. This is the reason behind it all.”
Where once there was darkness, now there is light. Where once there was fear, now there is peace. Where once there was death … life.
And God is honoured as He rightly deserves.
And so the tears trickle.
I consider the pocket of Light in this tiny part of the world – God seeing it, and Him being here – and being pleased.
I think of the pocket of Light where our home church is meeting – the darkness surrounding them perhaps just as deep as the ancestor and spirit-worship filled mountains of the Philippines.
I think of the pockets of Light in other tribal areas, where the darkness has been penetrated and there are believers.
And suddenly I have a picture of the world with little pockets of light springing up everywhere – kind of what you see sometimes on tv as they show a satellite image and first one tiny light springs up and then another, another, and then dozens, then hundreds … until there is a beautiful glow all over the earth.
Darkness? Yes, there is still much and it’s easy to get discouraged at times.
But God is at work! He has His pockets of Light all around the world and they are growing!
“I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”
Last week we heard of yet another tribal group who heard the Gospel for the first time and now there are believers there too. And another, also in the Philippines, where the teaching from God’s Word has just begun. And yet again – a young missionary family just finished language study and ready to locate and move into an unreached tribal group.
God is at work. But the harvest is plentiful and the labourers are few. Maybe He is calling you to help light the darkness.
