The infamous Windy City has so much to offer after all: sports and music and museums and food and you name it, you can probably find it.
Why do we do that? Why do we visit people in other famous locations, and at the end of our touristy day, they tell us we’ve done and seen more in our short vacation than they have in their lifetime of living there?
Because when something is too close, too easily accessible, we don’t see the need to go and do. Our response echoes the fictional character Scarlett O’Hara, “Tomorrow is another day!”
The proximity of being a stone’s throw from any church; the freedom to talk about Jesus with our friends without being killed for it; the access to a Bible on our phones, or multiple versions at a local Christian bookstore. All of those things have less meaning to us.
On the other side of the hemisphere, when I lived in Argentina, we would sell Christian books to raise support for our local missionaries. People would gobble up every new book we got in stock. Others, whose faces we would see at almost every event, would save their precious pesos until they could purchase just one more.
Friends on the eastern side of the globe, can barely mention what they are doing in their country, for fear of losing permission to live there, or perhaps at the risk of going behind bars (though that didn’t stop some as much as you would think!).
Because a starving man knows the value of food. We on the other hand, have acted a bit gluttonous.
Our Christian gluttony could get dangerous: we could start depending on the government to look after the poor, widowed and orphaned. We could start getting lazy about standing up for the oppressed and defenseless. Why? Because we have stopped consuming the Word that tells us, the church, to participate in these important acts.
Many who convert in the US treat Christianity similar to how I treated Chicago. The buzz of a new thing makes them read the Bible for a bit, get their fill in Christian lyric music and insert-popular-Christian-speaker preaching, but then sort of fade away once a new trend comes along. Then when death becomes imminent, one might turn back to the church, since it’s across the street any way. Convenient.
Unfortunately, that in between time has been lost.
All this time of being so close to some of the best Seminaries in the world, surrounded by convicting speakers and libraries of commentaries to help us understand Scripture, and we do very little to capitalize on them. I admit, I am one of these offenders!
One way to do that is by going on a short or long term mission trip. Mission work is not for the faint of heart, which is why a short-term trip is recommended for beginners. By serving those who don’t have the same spiritual or physical advantages we have, we get a dose of perspective which helps us turn more fervently to the One who has given us so much. We are reminded of the covenant, or promise, given to Abraham: The Lord will bless you so you can be a blessing to the nations. Our richness of access to all the aforementioned resources was so we could take that knowledge of God’s goodness to the rest of the world—no airport security can confiscate your brain after all!