When they were growing up, my kids learned to just assume that I would know all sorts of things about our vacation spot. Weirder than that, however, strangers in the places we would visit would stop me and ask for directions -- and I could usually help them!
I tell you this story because it will help you understand why -- as I prepare to travel to Kazakhstan -- I was strangely comforted by a segment of Rob Bell's book Velvet Elvis, where he says,
"Missions is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there. It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight. Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just didn't realize it. You see God where others don't. And then you point him out.
"Perhaps we ought to replace the word missionary with tour guide, because we cannot show people something we haven't seen.
". . . So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people there the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst.
". . . Tour guides are people who see depth and texture and connection where others don't. That is why the best teachers are masters of the obvious. They see the same things that we do, but they are aware of so much more. And when they point it out, it changes the way we see everything."
Bell then mentions the woman who anointed Jesus with expensive perfume -- how some thought it was a waste of money, but how Jesus offers such a different perspective. He's a tour guide, pointing out the reality/beauty others missed.
I'm glad to have this lesson before we travel to a land far away.
I'm glad my job isn't to haul Jesus over there. I'm much more comfortable with being a tour guide to point to the God who is already there.
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