Because Jesus

A missionary who my church supports died this past week. He was a crazy-in-love-with-Jesus guy who had devoted his life to serving his Saviour in Togo. He was a doctor, the head of a hospital there that serves thousands of sick people each year, and is seeing many people come to Christ. He was a colleague, a friend, a son, a son-in-law, a brother, a husband, a father of four boys. Within less than two weeks, he got sick with malaria and typhoid. He did not respond to treatment. He was medevaced out to a hospital in Germany, where he died shortly after his arrival. He was 46 years old.

We prayed for his healing. This man was loved and needed. He was serving God faithfully in a hard country. So why would God allow him to die? Indeed, if we take the sovereignty of God seriously, why would God take him? As followers of Jesus, we want to believe there is a reason, and we want to know it. If I could only see some vast, eternal plan, it might make me feel better about the fact that this fine, fine man died, leaving behind a crater in his family, in his ministry, and in his country of service. If I could only look at the situation and see how God is going to be glorified in this, as I believe he will be, it might make me feel better.

There are no answers. There rarely are in heartache and tragedy. There's only the throbbing pain of loss and the desperate clinging to the notion that somehow, in all of this, God is still good, that he is still worthy of my love and trust, and that there is a vast, eternal plan that will lead to his glory.

But I've been thinking about it a lot. Good friends of mine served with Todd in Togo several years ago. They had to come back to Canada because of a medical emergency. Now Dr. Todd is gone because of a medical emergency. And in several months, my church will send another family to Togo. I don't want them to go. Togo is a country that chews people up and spits them out. (It might not be, really, but that's the impression I'm getting.) People go to Togo and they get sick and die of horrible infections and illnesses. Togo isn't safe.

And then I thought, That's why Todd died. He died because he lived in a country that wasn't safe. He took a crazy risk - moving himself and his family to a country where disease and death are rampant, and health care is limited to the extreme. He died because he and his family lived and served Jesus in a country where malaria and typhoid and all sorts of other horrid nasty things that want to kill you live, and just because he was a believer and a missionary did not make him immune to the natural risks and consequences of living in that place, any more than just because I am a believer doesn't make me immune to cancer, heart disease, or traffic accidents on the 401. It's not so startling that he would die from malaria and typhoid in a country where those diseases are rife.

What is startling is that he was there at all.

Why would anyone leave the relative safety of life in a developed country (a relative safety that is probably largely illusory) to live in the relative danger of an undeveloped country (a relative danger that is probably somewhat exaggerated)?

Because Jesus.

Because Jesus called him there. And because he understood that the glory of Jesus was of far greater consequence than his own comfort and safety.

Because Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising its shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. And Todd, for the joy set before him, endured malaria and typhoid, despising its shame, and is now rejoicing in the presence of Jesus.

And what is startling is that anyone who is still there, knowing the risks, would stay. Or that anyone new, knowing the risks, would go. What is startling is that anyone at all who had a choice, knowing the risks, would voluntarily accept those risks, laying down control of his or her own life, potentially laying down his or her life.

For Jesus.

That is startling. For this fat, comfortable, prosperity-gospel-tainted North American believer who is used to my padded pew and my Starbucks coffee, that is startling. For this kingdom-of-me Westerner who has the mindset (however I try to deny it) that serving Jesus ought to come with some special compensation, some kind of free pass-out-of-bad-stuff-that-could-happen, the thought that laying down my life to follow Jesus might mean actually laying down my physical life is startling.

But this is the fact: laying down my life to follow Jesus could mean actually laying down my physical life. If I am truly living for Jesus, that is the reality, just as much here in North America as in Togo. If I am truly following Jesus, my life is no more in my control here than it would be anywhere else in the world. And the hard truth is that, conversely, if I am grasping for control of my own life, if I am more interested in staying safe and comfortable than I am in the glory of Jesus, if I am not willing to actually die for Jesus, even right here in North America, then I am not following Jesus at all.

I think Todd knew that. I think that people who grasp the notion that following Jesus means laying down one's life, who truly understand it at the deepest level, stop seeing things and places and people as "safe" or "unsafe", "developed" or "undeveloped", "comfortable" or "uncomfortable". They go against all the self-seeking, self-serving interests of the sinful human heart. They stop investing in the Kingdom of Me, and begin to invest in the Kingdom of God. They recognize that God's glory is of infinitely greater value than safety and comfort and ease. They don't just talk about it with words. They actually live that way.

They see Jesus.

And they follow. Wherever they are. Wherever he calls them.

And he is glorified.