We all know John 3:16 by heart but sometimes the disconnect between heart and mind is hard to overcome. The other day while reading “cross cultural connections” by Duane Elmer a light bulb went off in my mind. In John 3:16, Jesus says “God so loved the world” so what does the world part look like. It is easy to say God loves everyone but lets put it in perspective like Duane did for me. If we assembled a village of 1,000 people today that represented the world’s population, what would it look like as of the year 2000. 206 would be Chinese, 167 would be Indian, 79 would be from Central and South America, 50 would be from the Russia, 51 would be from North America, 45 would be Western European, 33 would be Indonesian, 21 would be from Japan, 22 would be from Bangladesh, 21 would be from Nigeria, 24 would be from Pakistan, 118 would be from sub-Saharan African and other Asian countries.
Wow what an awesome reminder that our God that we serve is so much bigger than our little community that we interact with everyday. He is so diverse and I’m not talking about the difference between a Northerner or Southerner or West or East coaster. The people who live “up in the mountains” from where I live in the city are different from me. As a missionary our calling is to go into all the world and for us that calling is taking us to a little village on the edge of a desert in a very remote part of Africa. A village with 36 smaller “villages” nearby, just a drop in the bucket compared to the 7 billion people living on our planet. But God loves each and every one of the 7 billion and we are called to love them no matter what part of this great global village we live in. Let us all be faithful to love those around us each and every day.
Ha3els in Africa 