Freely Falling

It never fails to happen - something always falls out of your Bible as soon as you open it. Or so is the case with me. Today marks the 37th day I have been on the mission field in Tokyo, Japan, and although the work done here has been amazing, living life here has been a challenge like none other.

I live in an underground apartment floor, split in half for girls and guys, with 27 other people. There is only one place where we can get wireless internet access, which is the winding hallway between both sides of the cave (clever name for the underground apartment floor). We eat, sleep, and do ministry with each other 24 hours a day. Few of us knew each other before we came to Japan, we range from ages 17-22, different colleges, different states, different personalities, and different walks of life. As one of the journeymen missionaries said, "Just add cameras, and you have Christian reality TV. The saddest part is I would actually want to watch it!"

Thus is the story of our lives here. But, through all the differences, we have our common thread - Christ. And what a powerful thread He is. We have had no divisions of unity or any notable strife. I say nothing notable, for the hardest challenge we face is for everyone to wash their own dishes! But pouring our hearts out to the Japanese every day, as well as walking a few to several miles every day within Tokyo, we much be careful. So our head missionary planned a 3 day retreat for us to relax in the mountains and grow as a team, for we still have work to do here.

Here we were, in the valley of the beautiful mountains, so far out (but still inside Tokyo), you have to push a button to make the train doors open. At a Christian camp focused on reaching military kids and serving MKs, we found our place of renewal. I open my Bible, and, almost on cue, I have Hope tracks and Steps to Peace tracks fall out. I annoyingly reached over to pick them up, when a though ran across my head. How ironic it was to have peace and hope fall from my Bible.

But the illustration goes much deeper, as the parables of Jesus often do. As Christians, we have Jesus who lives inside us. As John the Baptist puts it, I must decrease, so He might increase. We are in a process of dying to the old self and putting on the new self, the self which has Jesus as its very core. From John the Apostle we know Jesus is the Word - For in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. The same Word by which light, and all things were created, in the beginning. And by the hand of Paul, we are called to be imitators of Christ, imitators of the Word.

We are the Word to a lost world, a world which so desperately needs purpose. A world which needs hope. A world which needs life.

May those who open the pages of our life find peace and hope freely falling upon them; and as they kneel down to pick it up, may they lift their eyes to see the eternal giver of it all.