| Reflection: |
As I write this meditation, I am a guest on a missionary journey. Thanks to the wonders of technology, I can access a travel blog where day by day I can follow from afar a cousin and his wife who are in Western China to extend the work of God's Kingdom among the Lisu people. Specifically, they and two other couples are, on behalf of their church, presenting to the Lisu Christians a visual production of the Book of Acts and the Gospel of Matthew in the Lisu language. They have, indeed, taken the message of the Gospel "to the ends of the earth." These six recognize the power that the Holy Spirit has in the successful completion of their mission and have created via the Web a support group, a group whose mission it is to pray. My husband and I have downloaded a prayer requests attachment which directs our daily prayer. One of those requests encourages us to pray that the group has "openness to the Holy Spirit in the moment and opportunities to witness." And one of the missionaries on the date of departure reinforced this request: "As you pray for us, ask that we would be able to see God's heart for the world He loves and that we would be attuned to the Holy Spirit's promptings in the moment."
Technology has certainly changed the ways in which the Gospel can be spread—vernacular videos, church Web sites, GodTube, decreased travel times "to the ends of the earth," even e-mailed meditations. The power of the Holy Spirit, however, has never changed. It is as strong as it was when it empowered and filled the disciples ten days after Jesus spoke the above verse. We need only to trust and to pray that the Spirit will show us the Way to be Christ's witnesses wherever we are. |