The Harvest - A Kenya Trip Update

            It’s almost five in the afternoon on a Friday. I’m sitting at a table in the study room down the hall of my resident floor. In three days I am leaving the country for the first time (besides a little jaunt to Mexico when I was a wee lass, but that doesn’t really count) for a serving trip to Kenya.

            Today I was reading through Matthew 8 and the following verses hit me hard:

            “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’” (35-38)

            This is a passage we use often as a theological point for ministry, so I’ve grown up hearing it again and again and listening to people ask God to send workers and send us. However, today it hit me in a new way than before.

            Jesus’ heart broke for the people He saw. There were so many hurting, afraid, sick, dying people who were emotionally, socially, physically, financially, intellectually, and spiritually deficient. They were lacking. They were dry bones without the Truth. There were so many people that needed Him.

            There are more lost than found in this world. The workers are few and the harvest is plentiful, yet many of the workers we do have aren’t even working.

            I realized today that there are many things my team and I are going to see that we can in no way prepare ourselves for. We are going to go to Africa and we are going to have our hearts broken. We are going to come back home and we will be changed people.

            We are being sent out as workers for the harvest, of which, is plentiful.

            But we have to allow God to use us. We have to be obedient. We have to seek Him. We have to allow Him to shape our hearts and give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and love and light to pour out upon the people we meet.

            I am ecstatic to be blessed by such an opportunity, but I go forth in solemnity as well, knowing that there are hard, beautiful, heartbreaking things ahead. 

photo from Nitin Bhosale