Engaging God's World Ch.1

            At the age of 14 I moved from my hometown of Toronto and moved to a city in China where my mother began her calling as a missionary. The change was a drastic one for my entire family. We were of Korean descent blended with Western culture living in a densely cultured city in China. My personal struggles were hard to overcome, dealing with culture shock, sickness, and loneliness. On top of these struggles were the challenges of finding my place in between cultures in China, as I attended a Korean church, went to a Chinese school, and formally learned Chinese with international students. I ultimately learned to cope and manage my struggles even as my new cultural experiences broadened as I continued to Australia and spent a two year period in a number of different nations.

            My experiences from my time overseas are invaluable, shaping and developing my perspectives and character into who I have become today and I am incredibly thankful for it. However, there has come a cost to the “missionary” lifestyle, which is the sacrifice of a set home, familiar surroundings, and consistent relationships. Throughout this period of my time overseas my heart has yearned for that feeling of being “settled”, to know and understand my surroundings without the suddenness of change all over again. Now don’t get me wrong change is great, although when it comes in the form of a time continuum every three months it can become quite tiresome.  After a couple years of this type of nomadic style, I really began to long for a home. I was looking to be at peace, to be fulfilled and restored to the comfort of a fixed lifestyle and home, believing that all would be well and fulfilled once I had attained this position in life.

            It wasn’t until the middle of my time in Australia that I had the revelation that though the desire for a “set home environment” was an appropriate desire, I had the revelation that total fulfillment and completion do not lie in any earthly thing.  Plantinga writes:

“What’s remarkable is that these longings are unfulfillable…but if they come, they will not fill all our niches because we want more than these things can give.”

I discovered that as I was a child of God, created for the things of God, that the things of the world, though enjoyable, were not where my completion is ultimately found. I came to know that the Earth and my life on it was only temporary and that I needed to shift my sights on the realities of my life in the Kingdom of God and that completion would be found there.  Plantinga shares my perspective for he writes:

“God has made us for Himself. Our sense of God runs in us like a stream…We human beings want God even when we think that what we really want is a green valley, or a good time from our past, or a loved one.”

As a child of God I no longer look for nor anticipate water that will forever quench my thirst here on Earth. I know I won’t find any, and even with the good things that I do attain in my life I know that in the long run I will be left panting for something more. I want my cup to be permanently filled and to finally find that sense of “home” when my time comes to meet God. In the meantime, I hope to challenge myself to work at storing up treasures in Heaven rather than treasures in the world. Shouldn’t we all?