How can I come home?

I am sitting in the Mountain Inn in Mbabane just hanging out for the day enjoying some internet access. Last night was the youth overnight at Potter’s Wheel, so I got very little sleep but had fun. Today, I get to experience a very important cultural event here in southern Africa – the Bulls (South Africa) vs. the Chiefs (New Zealand) in a rugby championship. In the meantime, I decided to finally download my first month’s worth of photos from my memory card to my computer. As I am moving photos over, I keep catching glimpses of different children…smiling, laughing, making funny faces…and I find that my eyes are beginning to water. Each of the people I have met on my stay here thus far are so unique and they can light up a room in an instant with their smiles, hugs, and love. I still have two months left in Swaziland, but already my heart dreads having to leave and misses this place. I have to wonder, if this is how I feel now after only one month, how will I ever have the strength to come home?

This week I was reading in 2 Corinthians, and Paul’s words to the Corinthians rang so loudly in my heart. He said to them “you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together” (2 Corinthians 7:3). When I came to Swaziland, I really had only two desires: to be used by God however He could use me here, and to connect my heart with a people being devastated by HIV as I go forward to do HIV research. I am trying to be available to God, that the first may be true. The second one has already come to pass. A piece of this nation, these people, has been woven into my heart, and a piece of my heart will remain when I leave, so that as we both go forward we will be knit together, to live and to die.

Who has God knit into your heart? Who is He calling you to live with and die with? God has an amazing blessing for each of us to be a part of the joys and tribulations of others and they with us, so that together we can move forward in Him. It may not be a people in a far off nation or they could be right there in your home town; they could be the young or the old, of a certain ethnicity or a certain gender; you may see them daily or only hold them in your heart and your prayers. Whoever they are, your life will be richer for having them in it, and won’t be complete without them!