Why Australia?

A pastor who dropped by the base one day last week asked me why I decided to come to Australia to serve in missions. It’s a question that’s been posed to me several times recently. So, apart from my own initial reaction - that this is my “do-over” after having failed to come on a university exchange - I hadn’t given it much, serious thought. 

When I finally sat down to think and pray about it, here’s what came up.

This is a nation packed with the fatherless, broken homes, multiple parents and siblings under one or many roofs, alcoholism, as well as public displays of verbal and emotional abuse. Perhaps it’s because I’ve paid more attention than I ever did before. But I honestly think there is something that needs God’s presence here in families more uniquely than what I witnessed growing up in Canada.

Sure, I had many friends whose parents were divorced when I was younger. And yes, there are broken homes all over the place. But there is something that pulls on my heart for Aussie families.

When I first moved here two years ago, I distinctly remember walking to the shopping centre and hearing a mother screaming at her children in her house. The Queenslander-style of home is very open to let a breeze cool things down. But that open-concept building also means you can hear your neighbours – even as you walk past – in a way that was totally unfamiliar to me. I was used to brick, sealed windows and insulated walls that keep the elements out and the sounds in.

Maybe it makes sense to pursue the Kingdom task of encouraging godly families in Australia, simply based on the anecdotal evidence I’ve witnessed. To champion godly families – and communities – I believe it’s necessary to first champion godly women and men who truly know their identity and value in Christ. Because once they have that down, the women and men know how to treat each other and their family. 

The question isn’t so much why Australia, but how do I begin seeing God’s Kingdom expand here especially in families.  I don’t have the answers, but luckily, I serve the One who does.

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A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.
Psalm 68:5  (NIV)

...seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you... Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.
Jeremiah 29:7 (NIV)