As many of you may know, I just returned from an eight-day trip to the Navajo Nation, my seventh since 2004. This year, the team helped with the construction of a new church parsonage at Ojo Amarillo, New Mexico. We also put on a Vacation Bible School for the area children.
I find coming back from the mission field strange and disorienting, far more than going out. Mission experiences can be strong (even overpowering), yet when we get back to "the World" everything is just as we left it. It can almost feel like we never left at all. It's far too easy to jump right back where you left off, filing your mission experiences away as pleasant memories.
On the other side of this, the mission field can be very alluring. It can be so refreshing to step out of our day-to-day lives that it's tempting never to return! Even when you get back, you can leave a part of yourself out there.
Neither of these extremes is healthy; we must seek a middle path. Can we come back from the mission field energized by our experiences, yet able to incorporate into our ordinary lives some of what we discovered Out There? That's the question I'm trying to answer this week!
2 comments:
I so understand. The chain the children made really hit home with me. Seeing how much they were thankful for when they have so little. And our chain was so short in comparison when we have so much. I am trying to take some of that back to my daily life so that I can stop stressing about the little stuff. It is very hard not to fall into the same old routine.
Do you ever get to Santa Fe when you go there?
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