A number of years ago some good friends of ours sensed a call to go overseas as missionaries serving in Africa. As they prepared and then said their tearful farewells at the airport, I sort of imagined that they would be on some sort of permanent high intensity Billy Graham Crusade. Rallies in large halls, lights and powerful sound systems, dapper suits and ties, choirs and bands, powerful appeals, tearful responses followed by mass conversions followed in quick succession by a virtual army of builders constructing steepled chapels with rows of fixed pews, pulpits and carpeted stages across the land!
I was quite startled when I realized that much of their next five years would be spent living in an adobe hut in a far dry desert, learning a difficult dialect and making friends with and caring for a people who would never find their way into my imagined Crusade!
The Message paraphrase describes the coming of Jesus into the world like this: “... The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” (John 1:14).
