Heart-attachments
Most of the times when I close my eyes for a second in the middle of the day or to pause to pray, I am transported back to China. Sometimes I am walking on that street between the hotel and the restaurant from my first China trip, sometimes I am kicking up dust in the little city on my second China trip, and sometimes I am swatting mosquitos on the campus of my third trip. Sometimes I am on the "pedestrain walkway", sometimes I am in that cold, cold middle school classroom, sometimes I am playing cards in that little dorm room with all those girls. It's funny how you just don't forget.
There's something special about the place where you went on your first mission trip. Probably nothing in the world will change the way I feel about the people in the land of all those trips that I've gone to. It's the same way I know Sam feels every time he sees people who look or dress or worship sorta like the ones where he spent three years of his life. It's the same way most of us feel about our home towns where we grew up. There's an intensity and a love and a loyalty and a special heart-connection. Our hearts always go out to those people. We are attached to the place and to the people -- and nothing can replace it.
What's the reason? Maybe it's because it cost us so much to get there. And, when we were there, we made it our hometown for that short expanse of time as we gave all of ourselves and all of our faith to depend on the One true God who would deliver. We incline our ears toward Heaven, we are desperate to hear His words and His heartbeat, and we choose at last to see as He sees and love as He loves...
We loved as He loves - that one group of people in that one corner of the world - because we had the privilege of entering into that world firsthand -- seeing real faces, looking into the life held behind real eyes, shaking, touching real hands -- warm, soft -- we felt their breath, we heard their hurts, we saw them laugh. They're real to us, they're personal to us -- they're not just two-dimensional pictures any more...
This morning I realized that my heart-attachment and partiality to that one group of people in that one corner of the world is the same connection and partiality that God has for every group of people in every place on the face of this earth. It's like every town (and every tribe and every village) is God's hometown. His heart always goes out to every people. He's in love with every one - because He's seen their faces and knows their hearts... and not only has He felt their breath but He was the One who gave them their breath of life. And I was floored by this overwhelming, dawning realization that God loves in that partial sort of way -- sees in His waking dreams -- all the faces of all the people on this whole earth...!! *whoah* [selah]
--if only all of us felt this intense heart-attachment -- as God has a heart-attachment -- for all the people on the face of this earth! I think His Kingdom would come sooner if we could have a heart like God's...
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