Reflections and resources for lifelong learning for missionaries

Tag: attitude

Global Humility – A book, a challenge, a prayer

Editor’s note: This book review was originally posted on the blog, A Life Overseas. It is reposted with permission from the author, Marilyn Gardner. Marilyn grew up in Pakistan and as an adult has lived in Pakistan, Egypt, the United States, and most recently Northern Iraq. She currently lives in Boston where she works with community health workers from immigrant and refugee communities. You can find her blogging at Communicating Across Boundaries. This review of the book Global Humility was written in 2018, just after she moved to Northern Iraq.

“Building bridges means moving beyond my enclave of cultural comfort, moving to a place of cultural humility and willingness to learn.” 

 Marilyn Gardner, Between Worlds, Essays on Culture and Belonging 

Five weeks ago we moved from an apartment in the multicultural city of Cambridge, Massachusetts to an apartment in a city nestled beneath the kewa rash (black mountains) of Kurdistan in Northern, Iraq. We are learning to live and love in a city and country that we have known just through visiting. With this move, our daily life has changed dramatically.

We arrived in Rania like new born babies, eyes wide open to everything around us. Like babies, we don’t have language to describe our feelings and we too want to cry when we are hungry, or sleepy, or thirsty. But we are not babies. We are adults and we have many years behind us that effect how we engage and interact in our new surroundings.

A Book

Global Humility

It is within this context that I completed reading Global Humility: Attitudes For Mission by Andy McCullough. In this book, he asserts that the number one factor affecting missions in our world is lack of humility. This is a powerful and troubling assertion. It’s also an important one. Those of us who are Christians engaged in cross-cultural work, whether we be missionaries or not, have the important task of communicating across many boundaries. To do that well, humility is essential.

Suffering and resilience
Photo by Hannah Gibbs on Unsplash

Suffering: God’s method of developing resilience

For several months now, I have been thinking about this topic of resilience in cross-cultural workers. I admit that I have been somewhat troubled by what the Scriptures tell me about God’s method of using suffering to develop resilience. As I have said in previous posts on this topic, the Scriptures do not use the word “resilience”. But the word “perseverance”1 in the Greek, “hupomone” is found repeatedly in Holy Writ. It seems to capture the idea of resilience.

So what do I find troubling in Scripture? In my thinking, the logical way to strengthen a missionary’s resilience is to:

  1. provide them with good training to prepare them for hard times
  2. ensure that they have excellent member care when they go through hard times.

From a human perspective, I struggle to see how suffering in any way contributes to the development of resilience. Isn’t our goal here to minimize the suffering?

Resilience comes from suffering

But what do the Scriptures say about how God produces perseverance in the believer? Look at what Paul says in Romans chapter 5.

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

Romans 5:3–4
Thankful
Photo by Kiy Turk on Unsplash

Thankful

“Thankful” is my word or theme for this year 2020. What a year to be trying to intentionally put this into practice!  The end of 2019 had some hard times, struggles with family issues and things not going as I thought they would (can anyone relate??). Little did I know in the fall of 2019 that more things wouldn’t go as planned in the spring of 2020!

But God has been faithfully reminding me of this verse.

“Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (I Thess 5:18)

He has also reminded me of my commitment to be thankful! As I train my heart and mind to give thanks, I’m recognizing day after day that God is good. I can see His hand at work in ALL things working together for good, even when sometimes the individual pieces don’t feel or look so good. This has been a journey over the last months of learning to SEE things from a different perspective.

Exploring Spiritual Formation: Attitude

Strolling through gift shops one summer, my husband George and I spotted a T-shirt which said, “Sometimes I wake up Grumpy, other times I let her sleep.” Wise husband that he is, George did not buy the shirt. Alas, my husband is a happy morning person, and each morning presents a major challenge: how will I respond to my husband’s innate cheerfulness? Will love or grumpiness win the day?

It may sound like a simple problem to overcome, but feelings are tricky things. They often show up unbidden and, if left unexamined (and unchecked), may morph into attitudes. And habitual attitudes often result in character qualities displayed for the world to see.

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