A Chance to Die

It’s 106°F plus humidity. Sweat is dripping down and drenching every inch of my body. I’m trying to finish sweeping and mopping my ever-dusty floors; one child is having another diarrhea episode, and the other has fallen outside and is sobbing for a Band-Aid. People are congregating outside my door and clapping for my attention, asking to use my phone to call family in a neighboring country, asking for more money, wanting me to buy things from them, wanting to work for me so they can make repairs to their house before the rainy season, etc. Stephen is at the hospital, a place he frequents night and day, and I find myself at the edge of sanity. 
Stephen comes home and relates his day to me. Two emergency C-sections this afternoon. One was a uterine rupture. When he opened the abdomen, the baby was just lying there in the abdomen with the placenta. Dead. The other baby was also dead after the mother came in after having been ruptured for several days already. He saw a sweet, big-eyed 12-year-old boy who fell out of a mango tree and has struggled through several surgeries. Also on his list was another boy who fell out of a mango tree and landed on the horn of a bull, which perforated his abdomen; a baby who was bleeding out from the mouth; a man who returned with complications from a month ago—and the list continued.

Some days it just seems like a lot.

In 2022 I launched a challenge for myself to spend more time reading. That year I gravitated to many missionary biographies, and I slowly started thinking romantically about being a missionary. Fast-forward three years, and I am a missionary. But it’s not quite as romantic as the books made it seem!

Dying daily is as uncomfortable as it sounds.

C. T. Studd once said, “The ‘romance’ of a missionary is often made up of monotony and drudgery. There is often no glamor in it. It does not stir a man’s spirit or blood. So don’t come out to be a missionary as an experiment. It is useless and dangerous. Only come if you feel you would rather die than not come. Don’t come if you want to make a great name or want to live long. Come if you feel there is no greater honor, after living for Christ, than to die for Him.”

Amy Carmichael, who spent most of her life in India saving girls from temple prostitution and raising them as loving Christians, said, “Missionary work is simply a chance to die.”

These quotes perhaps infer a physical death. But I believe they also encompass the maybe harder daily dying to self that is inescapable when living a life of service in the Lord’s will.

Since moving here, every day we have the opportunity to die to self. There is ample opportunity to give until you feel you have nothing left to give. And to give up so many things you never planned on giving up. Dying daily is as uncomfortable as it sounds. But there is the promised Comforter who brings peace and joy when fully surrendered to the Lord’s leading.

I recently listened to a podcast talking about the last years of Corrie ten Boom, the famous Dutch author and public speaker. She was in her 80s and still traveling all the time. She started to be tempted to think that it was time for her to settle down and take it easy. After all, weren’t her other friends holding grandchildren, knitting in easy chairs, and enjoying their elderly years? She was dealing with tickets and passports and flights and luggage and speaking schedules, etc. So she wrote to a friend telling her to get a room ready with a comfortable easy chair; she was retiring. After reading her Bible and praying, however, she was not at peace with this idea. She felt that God had more for her to do. She then decided that it was not up to her to give God instructions; she was simply to report for duty. So she wrote another letter to that friend and said, “Forget about that last letter I wrote. I refuse to spend the rest of my life in a pasture when there are so many fields to harvest. I hope to die in harness.” Wow.

This is the heart we are praying for daily. Will you pray this with us as well? Lord, make us willing to die daily for You.