You know that weird feeling you sometimes have after a mission trip? Like, your “normal” is no longer normal? Well, that’s — for lack of a better word — normal. In other words, if your life feels a little bit wrecked after a mission trip, congratulations. That’s supposed to happen.
As an AIM staffer, I’ve learned from hearing others’ experiences that a mission trip is the perfect opportunity for God to turn your world upside down. As a project leader, I have even had the “privilege” of experiencing the feeling myself. On a recent mission trip I took to Belen, Costa Rica, part of my life came undone. I was ruined in the best way. Let me explain…
Living in true community weaned me of my addiction to technology and artificial “social networks.” Spending a week eating, sleeping, and living with those that were serving beside me revolutionized how I related to others. It broke my attachment to emails and texting and cell phones, because I realized that in those exchanges I was longing for something deeper.
Fervent prayer cured me of my obsession with endless knowledge and dead orthodoxy. I didn’t need to read another book about spiritual discipline or participate in another program. I got to live it. Since prayer was a means of survival on the trip, I actually experienced the Father’s heart and walked away a different person.
In Costa Rica, the abundant joy of the people we were serving helped displace my cynical worldview and general distrust of others. Laughing with them until my face hurt restored freedom to my faith and chased away a haughty skepticism of the church.
But when I returned home, I didn’t know what to do. How is such an experience sustainable, I wondered, and should it be? Everything felt weird and uncomfortable; some things seemed even ridiculous (do we really need 100 different kinds of breakfast cereal to choose from?).
Friends, we need to fast from our culture. We take so many things for granted — like countless choices of places to eat out, much less the fact that we’ll actually have food in our bellies each day. While a missions project is just one means of this, the fast is nonetheless crucial to our spiritual growth.
When we stand in solidarity with others in need, we learn that real life can’t be contained, distributed, and purchased in mass quantities at your local grocer. The real kind of life that we’re looking for is a narrow road that few find. It’s the sort of thing that you need to really search for, and when you find it, it demands everything of you. You sell all that you have for it. And as you lose everything that seems to be your life, you gain what is most important — your soul.
Make no mistake. I’m glad to be back in a place that speaks my language and has a few creature comforts. I’m glad to be home. But part of me longs to stay wrecked. I think that I need it. I don’t want everything to go back to normal. I want to stay a little strange. Because it seems that God works most powerfully when I’m out of my comfort zone, being stretched. I don’t know how to do this without going on a journey that calls me to sacrifice and surrender.
A mission trip helps you do that. It reminds you that your agenda isn’t always God’s agenda. Yes, it sort of messes you up, but you end feeling like a more complete person in the end. I don’t know about you, but I need more of that in my life — more of my world getting turned upside down. I need to remember that Jesus’ definition of abundant life looks more like dying or being “wrecked” than it resembles a perfect resume or portfolio. And I need to remember that feeling a bit messed up after such an experience is a good thing. It means that I was not made for this world. It reminds me of a story I heard years ago in Sunday School about a mustard seed and a tree, and a kingdom that was coming.
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