Virtual Reality

Just a few weeks left and it will be time for our national staff retreat...so my virtual conference team and I are busy working on details. Sometimes it is challenging to get work done when we're spread out all over the country. It can cause any good missionary to dread the cyberspace commute to work. But as is often the case, the "super Holy Spirit vision" can intervene and change the way we look at things, no matter what corner of the globe we're seated in. Today was no exception.

One of staff women "skyped" (Skype is a telephone/chat computer program that makes long-distance communication as easy as pie!) this morning to ask if I'd received in my mailbox the last important mail-out that was sent last week. We'd worked hard on this mail-out: the words were crafted just right, the grammar was reviewed and edited, special maps and directions of how to arrive were pasted together, special paper was used, the mail-out date was very specific.....

"It hasn't arrived yet," I typed into my little skype chat box. "La verdad es que estoy preocupada," which translates to, "The truth is I'm worried." We interacted for a few more minutes, trying to convince ourselves of all the logical reasons that it could be delayed and should be arriving any day now but the worry was still there.

By God's grace, before our worry turned to fretting I asked her (via skype chat), "Why don't we pray right now?" "That's exactly what I was thinking!" she replied.

It seemed like such a small thing, some might say that it's too small to pray about....but it seems to be the very best way to invite the eternal into the temporal, the sacred into the secular.

So we prayed....typing out phrases of praise and worship and petitions back and forth, back and forth. We covered the mail-out topic and moved on to God's greatness not only in the mail-out crisis but also in the small things in our daily lives that He really wants us to offer up to Him....and a good time was had by all.

When we finished, a fellow staff member called us from the post office to say that the mail-outs had been located and were intact and merely lacking a few cents of postage. He was able to add the extra cents and send them out today!

I believe God wants to use this staff conference...but He's slowly helping me to see that He's also using the journey toward the conference as well. All these plans, these details, bring us together as a work team in ways that we've never been together before. The experience of praying with my dear staff sister today was such a blessing to me and a bonding memory that I will share, long after the conference is over. We carried the burden together even though we lives hundreds of miles apart.

I think, probably every day, it's necessary for me to learn that God and His Word are more real than anything else we see or experience. Today was a simple but vivid reminder of that for both of us!

Powered by the Lord our staff are bringing real life and hope in Jesus to the virtual world in which we live. Thanks for being a part of this virtual team in a very real way.