culture fatigue – A Life Overseas |

Your Labor Is Not in Vain

Your labor is not in vain
Though the ground underneath you is cursed and stained
Your planting and reaping are never the same
Your labor is not in vain

There is a story in our family about my dad. He and my mom were on a home leave, having just finished their second four-year term in Pakistan. They were at a Christian retreat center where my dad studied during the day, taking required linguistic and Bible courses, and my mom took care of five children aged one to eleven. It was a lot.

My dad was tired and deeply discouraged. He and my mom had been living in Pakistan for ten years. They had come with one child and now had five. The toll of life in a remote area of a Muslim-majority country had caught up with him. The heat in the summer, living in what was at the time the hottest recorded area in South Asia; the absence of family and an English-speaking church to be a part of; the sense that no matter how hard you tried, you would never truly belong. There were team conflicts and cultural misunderstandings, dysentery, and children with broken bones.

But more than all this were the overriding questions in his mind: Does this matter? Are we here for nothing? What is the point of all this? Of missionary service? Of leaving all that is familiar? At heart, perhaps, he was asking, “Do I matter?”

My dad was ever the optimist. He was a stick-to-it, big-hearted, generous man. But his optimism had failed him. It was dead, somewhat like the desert ground where we lived in the Sindh region of Pakistan, brown and barren where nothing could grow. His heart felt the same.

It was during a morning study time while deep into examining the book of Acts that he experienced a breakthrough in his heart, soul, and mind. As he was reading about those missionary journeys so long ago, the ones that ended in shipwreck, hunger, and letters to tell about it, he suddenly saw himself as part of a bigger story, a story that began thousands of years before and would end in something so impossibly wonderful that no human could begin to describe it.

Yes, he was small. Yes, from the world’s perspective he was woefully insignificant. But his labor was not in vain. More than that, small as his work might be on the world stage, he knew without a doubt that he was beloved by a God who knew him.

Your labor is not unknown
Though the rocks they cry out and the sea it may groan
The place of your toil may not seem like a home
But your labor is not unknown

It’s this that comes to mind as I think of all of you. Sure, there are a few of you who might claim the word “influencer,” but overall, you are laboring without a lot of recognition. You may feel recognized at the occasional church while on home leave. For a brief hour you might feel famous even — your picture on the bulletin board with your kids looking halfway decent. Maybe you occasionally speak during the service when a pastor magnanimously gives up his spot, talking about the work, calling to mind God’s faithfulness even as you doubt all that you once knew.

Your work in Kuala Lumpur, Bangalore, Chittagong, Karachi, Bangkok, Shanghai, Jakarta, or a thousand other places may be filled with small, irritating difficulties or with major challenges. Divisions in your team, open hostility in your workplace, and insurmountable cultural differences may have you defeated. You may, like my dad, be thinking, “Why does any of this matter?”

Wherever you are, you are a small part of a massive universe.

Yet this is truth: you are a small part infinitely loved by God, and your labor is not in vain. Maybe your work is in Bible translation, and for weeks you’ve been stuck on three sentences as you translate from English to Greek to Brahui. Maybe you are a mom raising five kids, your hard-earned master’s degree languishing on a shelf while you pour yourself out trying to keep bugs out of the flour, humidity out of the house, and kids out of the hospital. Maybe you are a nurse working in the developing world wondering how on earth you can continue to function with so few resources. Whatever your situation, know this: your work matters, you matter. Your labor is not in vain.

The houses you labored to build
Will finally with laughter and joy be filled
The serpent that hurts and destroys will be killed
And all that is broken be healed

I write this piece from a place of transition — one of the many I have had through the years. My work in the Middle East ended abruptly with little warning, leaving me with dead dreams and deep grief. Since that time, amidst family crises and a global pandemic, I have slowly built a new career and a new place. All of that is now changing with budget cuts and family needs.

But whether in my passport country or overseas, throughout my life, there are times when I, like my dad, wonder if any of these matter. When doubt over the goodness and presence of God overwhelms me, threatening to control all I do and think. Yet, repeatedly, I have seen His goodness, His mercy, His grace in unexpected ways. In the dark, I have come to know it as God’s quiet whisper reminding me that nothing is wasted, that what I do, and more importantly who I am, matters.

So, as we wait for all to be made right, for our broken world to be restored, Christ at its center and evil defeated, may we know that the God who called us by name is with us, that our labor is not in vain.

For I have called you, called you by name
Your labor is not in vain

All lyrics © The Porter’s Gate “Your Labor Is Not in Vain.” Based on 1 Corinthians 15:38.

Are You Tired?

by Julie Francis

Have you ever wanted to quit? Give up? Throw in the towel? Throw up your hands? Walk out the door?

Are you tired? Tired of turning the other cheek? Putting others before yourself? Praying for your enemies? Blessing those who curse you?

Are you weary? From stress? Obligation? Conflict? Boredom? Same old/same old?

Are you sick of falling back into your old patterns? Stalled progress? Lack of results? Not seeing the fruit from your hard work?

Are you exhausted from lack of sleep? From depression? From difficult living conditions? From days on end without a Sabbath and no break in sight?

Do you wonder if you will make it out alive? Wonder how high the price will be? The amount you’ll have to pay? Who or what you will have to sacrifice?

Have you had it with giving things up? Saying goodbye (again)? Moving? Transitioning? Not having a home, connection, deep roots?

Are your tired of waiting for the blessing God promised? Is this the “full life” you expected?

Is it all… worth it?

Staring through the bars of a prison cell doesn’t seem like a very full life. Chained in filthy conditions. Little food. Forget the comforts of home. Yet, Paul wrote these words in confidence:

Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone—especially to those in the family of faith.

Your purpose in life isn’t to be comfortable. The world has lied to you. Your purpose in life isn’t to store up treasures on earth. The world has lied to you. Your purpose in life isn’t to do what makes you happy. The world has lied to you.

Your purpose in life is to please the Spirit. You will gain everlasting life! So, don’t give up.

By God’s grace, by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the joy and peace that come from being united in Jesus in his suffering and death– you can learn to be content no matter your circumstances. You can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. You can rejoice in your sufferings. You can know with certainty that what has happened to you will turn out for your deliverance. And that God works all things for good for those who love him.

Are you tired? Worn out? Bored? Apathetic? Sick of doing good? Exhausted from suffering? Are you about to fall under the weight of the cross God has asked you to carry?

Don’t give up. He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit. Amen.

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Julie Francis has lived as an alien and stranger in Southeast Asia for seven years and counting among a large, unreached people group (less than 1% Christian) with her only teammate and husband of 13 years. Together they raise their five Third Culture Kids. She likes drinking tea, ministering to children, and talking about loneliness, the power of the Word, and the faithfulness of God in hard times.

The Far Side of Somewhere

I remember my first home service. All those awkward experiences like drinking water from the tap and flushing the toilet with potable water again. Or feeling naked and exposed with no metal security bars on the windows. Or handing payment to cashiers with two hands (like I do in Cambodia) and then being embarrassed, because normal people don’t do that here.

What was up with the laundry smelling nice, all the time? (Come to think of it, what was up with everything smelling nice, all the time?) Could a load of laundry really take a mere two hours to complete, all the way from wash to wear, without having to hang on the line for two or three days in rainy season and still be damp — and smelling of fire and whatever dish the neighbors last cooked over said fire??

I wanted someone to explain to me why Americans felt the need to store hot water in a tank. Seemed like such a waste of energy when you could use a tankless water heater instead, thereby providing a never-ending source of hot water for yourself. (Running out of hot water in the winter is a big problem for me.)

Today I’m facing another home service. I’ll click publish on this blog post and leave my Cambodia home. I’ll board a plane and begin the process of temporarily re-entering my American home. I need to go. It’s time. After a second two-year stint in this country, culture fatigue has hit me hard. I’m worn out from the collective sin patterns of this culture, and I need a break. I love Cambodia, and I sometimes need a break from Cambodia.

Still, there’s nothing like preparing to go on home service for bringing on an identity crisis. Who am I, and where do I belong? I live in this city and traverse its Asian streets, all without quite belonging to them. Yet I don’t quite belong to the immaculately clean American streets I’ll soon be walking, either. Belonging is a slippery feeling for a global nomad. It can be everywhere, and it can be nowhere, all at the same time.

Nevertheless, when I walk in the door of my parents’ house tomorrow, I know I will once more experience the words of Bernard Cook, words that hung on the walls of every one of my childhood homes: “We need to have people who mean something to us; people to whom we can turn, knowing that being with them is coming home.” Growing up in a military family, I always knew Home was with my family. Home is with the people I love.

And as a Christian, I know Home is with God Himself. I love these words from Christine Hoover’s book From Good to Grace: “With Christ as my city, I can traipse all over the globe and never once not be at home. Because I dwell in His grace.” Christine knows a bit about this unmoored feeling of mine. She and her husband didn’t cross country borders when they moved to Virginia to church plant, but in leaving their home state of Texas to follow God’s leading, they certainly crossed the kind of deep cultural divide that make you wonder where in the world you belong.

I want Christ to be my city. I want to dwell in Him. The best part about finding home and belonging in Him is that He goes with me wherever I go. Psalm 139 is a gift to us global nomads in this regard. In verses 7 through 10, the Psalmist asks:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

When I moved to Cambodia nearly four years ago, I traveled west across the ocean on a morning flight, literally rising on the wings of the dawn. And when I stepped off the plane in Phnom Penh, I found that not only had God flown the skies with me, but that He was already here in this place — for I cannot flee from His presence. Even on the far side of the sea, He holds me fast. And no matter how deep the depths of my life, I know He is with me.

From now on, wherever I go and no matter which side of the sea I settle on, I will always be on the far side of somewhere I love. There is just no getting around that. But how precious of God to include David’s words in His Word. David could not have known about jet propulsion when he penned Psalm 139, but thousands of years later, his words are a balm to the global nomad’s soul. For we rise on the wings of the dawn, and we settle on the far side of the sea, and because God lives in us, we can find Home in every place He has made.