FOCUS!

Some time ago, Warren asked me, in the middle of a conversation, “Any ministry opportunities out there in Scotland for you, Abe?”

I replied, rather ruefully, “No. I’ve been here less than three months; they don’t know me from Adam. Why would anyone give me a ministry opportunity?”

That snippet of dialogue, however, got me thinking.

I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of a “dislocating” move. Dislocation it sure was, for me, this September. It’s not like I was passing through a foreign land; it was not like I was taking a brief vacation; it was not like I was on temporary assignment. I had moved … to live here! And I’d no idea what I was doing.

I had trouble understanding the language (English?)! I couldn’t recognize the coins and couldn’t keep track of my change. They wouldn’t let me open a bank account: I had no credit, they said. I still haven’t gotten used to the weather. Driving on the left side of the road. Fumbling with writing the dates first, and not the month. Confused with electric switches that turn “on” the “wrong” way. I didn’t even know how to make a phone call!

Lost. Bewildered. Muddled. What was I doing in a foreign land?

After two plus months, I’m still struggling. You should have heard me yesterday trying to negotiate my way through the process of obtaining car insurance. I must have had to spell my name, all my particulars, the license plate number, and the details of the car a million times to that dear lady, who was, thankfully, patient and tolerant. Indeed, because I couldn’t understand her, she had to spell everything out for me as well. Sounded like we were having a spelling-bee between ourselves.

At my wits’ end. In the dark. Beyond my depth.

(And no JIF!)

All this to say that I was completely out of my element, conducting a nonplussed, JIF-deprived, clueless existence. And the consequence? A loss of identity. Who was I? No longer a dermatologist. No more a preacher. No teaching for me. I have to wait for days to get an appointment to see a general practitioner to obtain a prescription for a steroid nasal-spray for my sinuses. And no one’s asking me my opinion of a sermon, either.

This is where I’m supposed to have ministry opportunities? Me? A “nobody”?

Who am I really? Is my identity all wrapped in my profession, my ministry, my DFW persona?

Or am I truly a “child of God,” an identity in comparison with which all other criteria and parameters, all other achievements and priorities, pale into inconsequentiality? So much so, the child of God can assert, “I am only, exclusively, this—a child of God; all else that I purport to be in this temporal life is dispensable, negligible, nonessential, in the light of eternity. In Christ!

Made me think, it did. Thanks, Warren.

And if I am only a child of God, then what must I be doing in this place, far away from it all? How am I to live?

I resolved to myself: Since I am here for a singular purpose, may God give me the grace to focus on that individual goal, that solitary aim, with all my being, to the best of my ability, for the glory of God. Everything else—confusing coinage, unintelligible utterances, insignificant “identity,” jarring JIFlessness—is not for me to worry or perseverate about.

In Christ, our call as believers is to be focused on serving Him, everywhere, always, and in everything we do.

… I am single-minded:
Forgetting the things that are behind
and reaching out
for the things that are ahead,
with this goal in mind,
I strive toward the prize
of the upward call of God
in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:13–14

Therefore we also have as our ambition,
whether at home or absent,
to be pleasing to Him.

2 Corinthians 5:9

“Pleasing to Him.” Our ambition. One ambition. Only ambition.

Not “ministry.” Not “identity.” Not being “somebody.”

But pleasing Him. Let that be our focus. All the days of our lives!