Most of us realize the enormous sacrifices which long-term international missionaries make when they go overseas. They are willing to walk away from their country, their home, their families and their comforts for the sake of Christ. It takes an incredible leap of faith to love a people enough to step outside everything you have known so they would come to know the love and peace that flow from the hands of Christ.
What few of us truly understand is the sacrifice made by those left behind. Loved ones sacrifice much for the cause of Christ when missionaries leave the States. When a couple answers the call of Christ to love the unlovable in the slums of India, two sets of parents lose their beloved children. Two loving families have fewer members at the Christmas dinner table and fewer stockings on the mantle. When God blesses that couple with children, two sets of grandparents miss the chance to play hide and go seek in the backyard or unload the bags for a long weekend sleepover.
These stateside families offer support to their long-distance relatives in whatever way they can. They take care of things in the states for them, send love-filled care packages and offer up ceaseless prayer on their behalf. Please remember in your prayers today the parents and loved ones of missionaries who have sacrificed for the Great Commission.
Much like the one described above, my family has been a constant support system. My parents were appointed to missionary service before I was born and, because of the late stage of my mother’s pregnancy, left for the field six weeks after my birth. Our family always supported us and loved us in every way they could and, in many ways, our service would not have been possible without them. Now I’m in college and bracing myself to wave goodbye to my parents and eight-year-old brother at the airport, when I’m the one being left behind.
When they’re gone, I won’t have a dad to take over when something in my car goes terribly, terribly wrong and I won’t have a mom to make me a tea in the lazy summer mornings. I won’t have a brother to wrestle with or tickle fight and I won’t have a house to come home to for spring break. But as much as I’d like to keep them here, I would fear lightning from heaven if I tried to stop my family from answering God’s call.
So after their plane takes off, I will be the one here praying and loving them from afar. For the ones left behind, it is love which sustains us. Our love of them, but mostly our love of Christ.
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