This weekend I attended the retirement celebrations of one of my closest friends. I guess it's just sort of a retirement. Mark is retiring from being a full-time pastor though he will remain in the church as a teacher and preach every once in awhile. He's also a professor at the local community college and he'll continue there, a position he hopes will become full-time in the next year or so.
Mark and I are not the most likely of friends. It's probably been about twenty years ago that he saw me sitting at a local diner, waiting for my breakfast, and he approached my table and asked if he could join me. It started as simple as that: two passing acquantances, one an evangelical pastor and the other a confirmed agnostic, sitting and having coffee together. The friendship grew to include the pastor sitting in the hospital for six hours praying as the agnostic went through a life-threatening surgery, the pastor officiating at the agnostics wedding, the pastor hearing the now former agnostic proclaiming Christ as his savior, the pastor and the former agnostic traveling half way around the world together to tell others about Christ.
Mark was instrumental in my coming to know and accept the gospel but he did it in the most benign and simple way: he became my friend. He invested his time, his friendship, and his prayer in me. To put it at it's most basic level, he just simply loved me.
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| Mark (second from the right) taking a break during our trip together. |
A few days ago I found out that another person had signed up to be on our team that is going to India this next January. As I've done in the past when someone who has never been to India or the mission field signs up, I sent him my primer for India missions. It includes a lot of practical information about the culture, what to pack, what to expect, and it finishes with some information about the actual ministry. The final paragraph is the most important, in my mind. It reads:
"Love the people you are sharing with. It's really that simple. The lives they live are hard. They work long hours to provide for their families. Most of them are dalits, the lowest social class in India. You are considered the highest of social class. To show them love is something they have never experienced from anyone but their own people. Not even their Hindu gods show them love. Love them and show them that love and do it without ceasing and without reservation. It's as effective as any gospel presentation could ever be."
I wrote that long before I started thinking about Mark retiring and our friendship and God's use of Mark in my becoming saved. The more I reflect on it, the more I think it's true. The most effective thing that believers can do for one another, for non-believers, and for ourselves, is to simply love. It sounds so simple and yet in practice can be so hard.
I'm looking forward to getting back to the people in which I've invested a big chunk of my heart. When I get there I'm sure I'll spend a fair amount of time reflecting on my friend Mark and the investment of love he made in me and the time we spent in India together simply investing our love into the people there.
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