Before the missions trip to Japan, several things in my life had seemed to be at a stasis point. At work, our team had worked hard to put together a major budget proposal, and now it was waiting on approval. It was out of our hands and in God’s. In my personal life, I had recently made several major changes as I stepped out in faith. I realized I had taken every step I knew to take and could go no further. The rest was up to God. Even my expectations for the trip had become open-ended. I felt caught between focusing on what God would say to me on the trip versus focusing away from myself and just looking for opportunities to serve. What should I prepare for? I tried to let go of all expectations and wait for God to show me what He would do. Once in country, that sense of waiting remained. Our missions trip schedule had large gaps of down time in which there was nothing to do. The ten day trip really only had about a day and a half’s worth of ministry work that actually needed to be done. We filled in the rest of the time with sightseeing, meals together, and quite a bit of time at the hotel. I also dealt with jet lag that would wake me up throughout the night, adding to the time spent staring at the hotel room ceiling. My futon mattress lay on the floor, surrounded by the wall-to-wall padded flooring. The smart TV near the bed had a home screen that played soothing background music. The TV menu options were in Japanese, so I couldn’t read them. Waiting hour after hour in the still, padded room, I sometimes felt less like I was on a missions trip and more like I was stuck on the menu of a video game, and I didn’t know how to press start. The hotel room was far from bad. A little tray under the TV held cups, green tea, and pour over coffee packets that were the highlight of my morning. A restaurant and a convenience store were an easy walk away, so food was always abundant. The room was on the 6th floor, and, while there were no windows with glass to look out, you could crack open the fire escape hatch and look out to the mix of Japanese suburb and farmland in the clear December sunlight. So, on the far side of the ocean, feeling more like I was at a monastery retreat than a missions trip, I lay on my padded floor. Before the trip, we had talked about the importance of being flexible and allowing the Lord to unfold our time in Japan as He wanted. It turned out that what was the flexibility to wait. Apparently there are things that God can only say to us in the total stillness of a padded room, thousands of miles away from the pressures of work and regular life. In the stillness of that waiting, my mind rested in a way it had not rested in the six years since I had returned from attempting to serve as a full-time missionary. This freed up huge amounts of mental energy. Old, unhealed places came bubbling up and demanded attention. Having nothing else to do, I stopped ignoring them. God had taken every care, distraction, and need, and held them in check, inviting me into the hard work of healing. Today, I’m not going to try to tell you everything that God and I wrestled through on that trip. Many of those things will come in later podcast episodes. What I will tell you that when I woke up on my first morning back home, something certain clicked inside me. I felt like I knew how to begin shaping the next chapter of my 70 year missions trip to Planet Earth. Waiting is difficult. It is often unsustainable for the long term. For a period of time, however, sometimes the uncertainty of stasis is exactly the place where we can hear from God most clearly. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit levirawls.substack.com
