Episode 38 - Half Way Around the World

Nomes here. Joey set me the task of writing this blog from a different perspective: What’s it like having a missionary brother half way around the world?

Now, I could tell you that life is more fun with Joey around and that games nights aren’t the same without him, but you probably already know that.  I could tell you that I miss him like crazy, but the truth is that now I have a smart phone I’m actually in more frequent contact with him in PNG than when he was at All Nations College this time last year.

Weirdly, the one thing that’s really different is this very blog. Joey’s not a writer, so it’s odd reading whole paragraphs by him at all. It’s even odder getting my information about him at the same time as any other person with access to the internet. But if I’m totally honest, the weirdest thing is that sibling rivalry wells up in me.

You see, since Joey left my life has been pretty awful. Less than a week after waving him off at the airport I fell off a cliff and was airlifted to hospital with a fractured skull and dislocated collarbone. Seven months later and I still don’t know if I’ll need an operation. Three months after the accident I was too physically and emotionally weak to return to helping disabled children or those with learning difficulties in mainstream schools, but I was also stone broke, so I got a minimum wage job in a shop.

Now before we go on, I’m not looking for sympathy here. There have also been some truly amazing things in my life. I have a medically trained fiancé who saved my life when I fell, and my job has been excellent physio for my shoulder. But reading blogs about how wonderful it is for Joey to be exactly where God wants him and doing such remarkable things to make the world a better place has often made me selfishly feel like a loser. God called Joey, not me. It seems like God doesn’t really mind what I do. Maybe doesn’t care.

I asked a vicar friend about this and he rather unhelpfully explained that God does call some people, like Joey to be a missionary, and him to be a vicar; and other people like me don’t have such a direct calling. They are to use the wisdom God gives them to make their own choices and so long as they don't sin, he doesn’t mind what they do. He and I aren’t really friends any more.

So I asked my much wiser best friend about it and she sat me down and opened her Bible at the concordance at the back and we trawled for about an hour until we decided that God does not show favouritism and that if he calls some people he must call us all, just to different things. Maybe he will give us a choice and allow us to use our wisdom like my vicar friend said, but that doesn’t mean he is indifferent.

One day, unrelated to the above, Mum mentioned that we’re all part of Joey’s ministry because we support him. Maybe, I thought, that’s my calling. So I looked up Philippians 2 and a dude called Epaphroditus. The Philippian church sent him to Paul to look after him and Paul said of him, “He risked his life to make up for the help you could not give me.” In a way I sent Joey to PNG to make up for the help I can’t give them. Supporting missionaries is a calling in itself.

Then one day my fiancé said to me, “I’m so proud of you for getting up at 5am to do a job that doesn’t fulfil you instead of just giving up.” And it all fell into place.

Paul didn’t say to the Philippians, “Well done, you sent Epaphroditus! Your work is done now and God doesn’t really mind if you work in a shop or with disabled children.” He said, “Look not only to your own interests but to the interests of others… Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose… Shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.”

In Athens he put it very poetically. “From one man God made every nation to inhabit the whole earth, and he decided the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not very far from each one of us.”

So if like me sometimes you read Joey’s blog and feel lacking, please be encouraged. Yes, God is doing amazing work through Joey. But Joey’s work isn’t more precious to God than yours, whether that’s working in a shop on minimum wage, caring for disabled children, knitting jumpers for Romanian orphans, looking after the grandkids, or like I was for a month or two after my accident, sat at home unable to hold a conversation but just about able to pray with emotions rather than words.

So what is it like having a missionary brother half way around the world? Challenging, but not in the way I expected. But God has used it not only to help the people of PNG know how much he loves them, but also to tell little old me that same thing. God wants me to obey him no matter how menial the calling seems to me.

This Christmas may we all shine like stars as we hold out the word of life in whichever place God chose us to be in.