The mission field is all around us...

The kids and I have spent this week the same way as many other Midwestern small-town families:  we processed corn for freezing.  Yes, I have a corn-cutter, but I don't like to use it.  I'm tired of emergency rooms - the knife seems safer to me, and I'm quite familiar with it.

We are so blessed, and we know this.  A 90-something year old cousin of my mother's just can't stop growin' corn.  He also can't stop giving it away.  Every year I simply guess at his age, but I'm never sure I'm right, so I have given up trying.  I know he's over ninety, and he's generous with his corn.

This year it was only my youngest five at home to help shuck the four large garbage bags full of ears of corn.  My oldest three have jobs in the community.  When our seven year old neighbor girl stopped by to play, we talked her into helping too.  Just  five young ones and me out in the yard, peeling husks from the corn.  (Gabe just isn't any help at all at 9 months of age....)  It's hot, and the silks cling everywhere - but it was nice too.  We talked about a lot of things like school, and how her daddy lost another job, how they don't have enough food to feed their cats (that's okay....we already feed them...), and, well, all of the heavy things on a seven year old heart.

God brings the mission field to us, doesn't he?  Isn't there always someone who needs to see Jesus in us, someone who needs his love - through us?   Is this how you find it, as well?

It seems to me that I can't plan it - it's as natural as can be.  We simply live, and walk, and go about our daily lives, and we look up, and there someone is, needing to see Him, through us.  Physical, financial, emotional, spiritual - there are so many ways that we may help.  If we pray for wisdom, he will let us know what is needed most.  God pours himself into our lives, and we turn right around and pour the overflow right back into the life of another.  There is nothing misappropriated in God's economy.