All those out there who like to sit in a waiting room please stand up…what? No one is standing? I think we can all agree that sitting in a waiting room stinks, be it for a doctor visit, or waiting for you car to be ready or just waiting for a table at a restaurant. It’s not fun, it tests our patience, it makes us angry, and then we tend to take that anger out on the receptionist, the children we brought with us or other people waiting. We humans don’t wait well.
So, last night before I went to bed I was surfing on the world wide interweb (my husband’s favorite term for the internet he stole from a movie)…anyhoo, I was surfing for statistics about the unreached, the unsaved, the poor, the less fortunate…why, you ask…for a slide show presentation on Mission Sunday at church…SOOooo,  I went to sleep last night with all these things in my head, numbers of unsaved people, massive parts of the world where there are ZERO missionaries, human trafficking, toddlers sold into sex rings (TODDLERS!?!) It was heart wrenching, and some of it nauseating…and CERTAILY CONVICTING!   And,  this morning, with all this still on my mind, in a half sleep/half wake state the thought came to me…what if when we died we find out that we have to sit in a waiting room and wait to get into heaven, wait for that door to open and a friendly angel call our name and lead us back to the room where we would wait some more to see the face of Jesus, sitting in the room, posters of heavenly mansions on the wall, hoping one might be ours, nervous about bad news, that we may not get the “well done, good and faithful servant” when He comes in the room–AND here’s the kicker– all of this waiting that we have to do is directly proportional to how much time we made God wait for our service on earth…! (I told you in my last blog that God talks to me in ways that my simple brain can understand)…but wow, this thought jolted me awake–how long would I be waiting??????  I immediately thanked God for His truly amazing GRACE…and for a glimpse of the pain we cause Him with our short-sightedness about the world around us. I realize that many of us are unable to pick up at a moment’s notice and go to the far reaches of the world…but there is much pain all around us, and we need (what I need to do) is to ask God to see the world through His eyes, with His compassion, and His urgency!  The bible tells us to go, it doesn’t say wait to go,  go if your family thinks it’s alright, go if you have some extra money…it just say to GO…it says we are to feed the hungry, heal the sick, sell our possessions and give to the poor…AND WE CAN DO THESE THINGS IN OUR OWN BACKYARD, IN OUR OWN TOWNS…!!  Lord, make me more aware, burden my heart with Your burdens for Your people…few quotes on this subject that struck me today are:

Here are a few quotes from missionaries that struck me today:

“Let my heart be broken with the things that break God’s heart. –Bob Pierce (founder of World Vision)

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” –Mother Teresa
“This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls on Earth.” –Keith Green