Where is my Calcutta?
Mother Theresa said, “Calcuttas are everywhere, so go and find your calcutta?”
Often I think in another life I would love to do________(I fill this in with all sorts of things, random examples climb mt everest or be a mechanic.) Right now I am serving in No Mans Land and I am working with people who have never lived in a peaceful time. Most have stories full of violence and danger and fear. For now this is my Calcutta. I went to Mae Sot this past weekend and spent time on the garbage dump. I visited old friends from last year and these friends have built their homes out of other peoples trash. (It puts a different spin on what is ones persons trash is another persons treasure or in this case… home.) So in a different life I would love to live on the dump with these people. That could have been my Calcutta. God has other plans, he calls me back to the states. I have asked why, no specific answer, but still I will return home? Every time I go overseas I think this could be it, I could find where I belong and where I am to serve all my life. I know that my friends and family wonder the same, “will Erin stay and never come back.” However, I should know that my life is not so simple and direct. God will surely not call me to something that is typical, he will puts all sorts of twists and turns in my way.
So in another life may be I would live in a hut with the sh people for the rest of my life, but now it is just a few months. So where will my Calcutta be in the states.
I have often struggle with the question of where do you feel called to do mission work? As a child I begged God to give me a place and a people that would take my heart captive. But with every trip, I became more eager to see something new. Conflict was warring inside of me…settle down find a place you belong one voice would whisper. While the other voice reminded me of the faces I have never met and the stories that were yet to be heard.
This is what do I know…I know that there are people all around the world who have been forgotten. They live in a war zone or on a garbage dump. They are lost in a bottle of whiskey living on the streets. They are the elderly and who have been stuck in a nursing facility waiting for eternity to take them. They have been abandoned because of their disabilities and deformities. They are everywhere, from America to Uganda to the Ukraine to Portugal to Burma.
The question is not where can I serve or who I can serve, but how can I serve. I do not think I will ever have specific life long location in which God will call me to serve, but He has called me to serve the poor and the broken. These people have captured my heart and I long to live side by side them Lord, I open my eyes to the Calcuttas of this world. Show me needs and ways to meet them. Give me the boldness of Christ when he loved people. Let not my desire for comfort be greater than my calling of service. My life is your Lord, Do with it as you like.
