Leaving for Japan 30 years ago, my wife and I knew that we would be leaving behind our family, friends, and our loving church in the US. In all our excitement at leaving for Japan to serve God we got rid of almost everything we owned, without a thought that we would need to furnish a house on our first home assignment! At that time there was a popular Christian song: “For the Sake of the Call” (by Steven Curtis Chapman). The lyrics went: “We will abandon it all, for the sake of the call”. That was exactly what we did, abandon everything, to bring the message of God’s love and grace to the Japanese.
Throughout all these years we’ve been in Japan, we have never felt a sense of regret at having left anything behind (apart from the mistake of discarding basic household items we needed on our first home assignment). The joy of walking with and serving Jesus has far outweighed any sense of loss.
Recently however, we have come to realize one thing that we never imagined leaving behind when we said yes to Japan all those years ago—we’ve now got eight grandkids! We see many of our friends living near their extended families as we experience the loss of being able to be with our grandchildren. This is something that we now realize we’ve been called to sacrifice.
We’ve also realized that leaving things behind is not a one-time thing when you first step on the plane, but rather a long, lifetime process. The process involves giving oneself daily for the sake of the call, serving Jesus and the gospel.
We are truly grateful to God for the time that we do get with family and grandkids, but there is something greater that we long to see: that picture in Revelation 7, where people from every nation, tribe, people, and language (including many Japanese), standing before the throne of God as his chosen people. That is worth leaving everything we could ever know and hold dear here on this earth.
By Tim, an OMF missionary
