Life Abroad

Life abroad is a mixed bag. On the one hand, you get all kinds of great new experiences and relationships, unique and plentiful opportunities to grow closer to God, and a handful of imminently pragmatic things like competency in a foreign language (hopefully) and a good bullet point for the resume. Then of course there's the downside: Being so far away from everything that happens with most of the people you know and love, culture stress, and many of the same old nags, just expressed in new ways--"What am I doing with my life?" "Will I ever stop acting this way?" "Why do bad things happen to good people?" and the like. Right now I'm experiencing more of the bad side of things--the nags, the uncertainties, the discontent, the fears.

While there's certainly a time and place for mourning and working out uncertainty, I don't care to make this blog that time and place. So instead, I want to point out a particularly spectacular benefit to living abroad. And like many of the best things in life, this benefit emerges corporately--it comes from many people and no one person alone.

Many friends of mine, real people I know and love, are scattered across this globe--school teachers, students, ministers, office workers, servants, businesspeople. Some of them I keep in touch with (even if only by perusing a blogsite), and many of them I do not. Some of them are struggling, and those that aren't are merely being given a moment's reprieve--a break in life's grand brawl. And some are winning the brawl, and some are battered to their wit's end. It's a picture that truly merits Shakespeare's clever invention: "Bittersweet." But through it all, and in it all, and some times in spite of what seems like "it all," I see the goodness and faithfulness of God. I see the church, the body of Christ--my friends, my family--in action on every field. It's warfare, to borrow the metaphor from Paul. And it's a painful and sometimes terrible thing to be fighting in such a war--the war behind and beyond and bedeviling every other skirmish, every terror, in the history of everything we know. And it's hard to accept and hard to stomach the damage done, not only to myself, but also to everyone I know and care about. And yet in the midst of this terrible battle, I see lives being transformed, I see heroes, I see old, gray, righteous heads lying down for the last time--in peace, assurance. I see victory outstripping the losses, even an occasional swoop into the jaws of death to snatch out some fallen soldier. And I see changes even in this foolish and fearful soul I call Me.

To such a God and Creator, the Author of all things good and pure and orderly and right, I say, Praise! Glory! And, keep your sheep safe until you return!