It’s a little after midnight and I just got home from the airport – I picked up Kristin after her return from Cancun where she has spent most of the week with her sister, Jill. Before her plane landed, I was noticing the number of people who were just standing around waiting for loved ones to return from trips around the globe. Flights from New York, Atlanta and a number of other cities are so commonplace these days. I thought about Jill driving from Oklahoma City to her home in western Oklahoma at the same time that we were here in Indy.
And a friend of mine returned from Burma on Wednesday after a few days of visiting missions and organizations in that part of the world. Not so long ago, he was in Central America on a similar trip with his daughter – doing God’s work in the mission field. There was also the case of the minister who is returning to Indy in another week or so to bring his donors up to date on what is going on in the mission field of Guatemala. And let’s not forget that last week I was in Evansville and earlier this week, I spent two days in Dallas. My cousin has travelled all over parts of Central and South America as well on mission work. My brother loves India and France. The world seems to be a much smaller place than it used to be.
You get the idea, I hope. You can stand in an airport and have no idea of how the lives of the people intersect. They are coming and going from everywhere and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to all of it. There is one thing they have in common, though. Standing at the baggage claim area, they all looked tired from their travels – no matter where they came from.
But it does bring to mind the distances that people travel and how much different things are today than they used to be, and not so long ago at that. The verse for this evening is the one that Christ has commanded us to obey. We are told, in Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Of course, we all know this as the Great Commission. My encouragement this evening is that God is still depending on us to go to the ends of the earth to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ. My prayer is that you will consider going outside your comfort zone in taking time to understand the magnitude of the mandate that we have received from God. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…