You are not answering my prayers, I repeated, a scowl in my voice that sounded more murderer than missionary.

My arms were about to give out after fifteen hours of flying with my double-ear-infection infant, whose screams drew every eye toward me, either in pity or loathing. My hands still reeked of my six-year-old’s vomit, which I had caught an hour earlier. My husband might have given me a break if he weren’t in the bathroom scrubbing his pants after our toddler’s diaper leaked brown everywhere. The stink polluted economy class, as if the sounds we contributed weren’t offensive enough.

It wasn’t our first rodeo traveling halfway around the world like beetles flipped on our backs. Our international travels form an ugly scrapbook of mishaps, with photos of feverish kids trying to sleep on airport carpet. I thought this time around would be different. How could it not be? Hundreds of people were praying. I imagined the golden bowls in heaven swirling with the incense of our friends’ and family’s prayers (Revelation 5:8). Surely, Jesus inhaled it with pleasure. The slightest wink or grin from my Father’s sunny face could keep our children at 98.6 degrees, their bodily fluids internal, and our plane punctual.

Where were those hundreds of prayers now? Had God misplaced them like a set of keys or muted them like an obnoxious ad? The Lord’s “no” stabbed like the throbbing inside my infant’s ears.

Praying While Weatherworn

This story isn’t special. Every one of us has extended a precious prayer and received what feels like a hailstorm in return. Or if not a hailstorm, maybe the cold silence of space. We are disturbed. What does this mean? How can we risk asking again, with its emotional toll? Are our longings safe with God? Can we receive the Lord’s “no” while reclining all the heavier against his chest, or should we question the safety of his embrace?

If only bad travel were the worst of it. Perhaps the Lord’s “no” grows fangs when your child stays sick, your marriage breaks, or cars collide. What happens when, after years of living desperately on your knees, the prodigal doesn’t return, mental illness gains momentum, or progress fighting besetting sin has little praise to report? We may ask, like Joni Eareckson Tada, “Who is this God I thought I knew? Who is this God who bids us crawl over broken glass just for the pleasure of his company?” (When God Weeps, 78).

Let’s zoom out and take a breath. Our disappointment with God can shrink our world. Without realizing it, we’re the horse with blinders, the scientist glued to his microscope, the painter shading in a nose’s shadow — so fixated on a part that we forget the whole. Just as we break from the office for a walk in the woods, we need the fresh air of a wider perspective.

“Can we receive the Lord’s ‘no’ while reclining all the heavier against his chest?”

Stepping back does not dismiss the painful mysteries of unanswered prayer and disappointment with God. When we look outside our experience, we are not forgetting or minimizing. We are saying, “I’m drowning, and I need a rock to hold onto. This one, gut-wrenching experience is sand I cannot stand on. Give me a place to put my feet.”

Thankfully, some thousands of years ago, King David turned the same cries into Psalm 69.

No Match for Majesty

He begins by saying, “Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold” (Psalm 69:1–2). Counselors advise paying special attention to the word-pictures people use to describe themselves. But it doesn’t take a professional to see that David’s drowning language means he’s not feeling too hot.

David is overwhelmed by sorrow. He’s brokenhearted, ashamed, and afflicted. He laments, “More in number than the hairs on my head are those who hate me without cause” (verse 4). Is there a friend to be found for David? Perhaps the loneliness would have been tolerable if the Lord had spoken up sooner. Instead, David admits, “I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God” (verse 3).

But as we read on, we watch David leave the cubicle for somewhere greener. He rightly speaks his hurts and complaints — to a point. Honesty is God’s prescription for prayer, but if David stopped at his life-and-death feelings, it would make for little more than a juicy coffee date. The magic happens when he sets aside mystery for majesty.

The majesty of a God who plucks us from the sea of our circumstances by his “saving faithfulness” (verse 13). The majesty of a God whose love does not flicker like a tired lightbulb but shines steadfastly (verse 16). The majesty of his abundant mercy, heaped up and spilling over like plates at Thanksgiving dinner (verse 16). Majesty of such magnitude that his imprisoned people revive and sing (verse 32).

Majesty louder than man’s contempt (verse 12) and available to the sackcloth-clad (verse 11). Majesty that transforms lone-rider men and women into decisive followers, those who can say in seasons of hailstorm and silence, “But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord” (verse 13). David is like the mountain climber motivated by the view from the top, only the panorama David is after holds the majesty of Zion (verse 35).

If majesty is heavyweight our world, we will make songs in the muck like David (verse 30). We will learn to give thanks while friendless and think of the precious reality ahead more than the presently disappointing one (verse 35). When our circumstances scream, “God is absent,” our prayers will reflect the confidence that “the Lord hears the needy” (verse 33).

Jesus Sang It Better

David prays this way, but so does Jesus. David may have felt like his old friends were now offering him poison for food and sour wine for drink (Psalm 69:21), but Jesus literally put his lips to a sour sponge on the cross (Matthew 27:34). Matthew Henry connects Christ to Psalm 69: “His throat is dried, but his heart is not; his eyes fail, but his faith does not. Thus our Lord Jesus, on the cross, cried out, Why hast thou forsaken me? Yet, at the same time, he kept hold of his relation to him: my God, my God.”

David sings Psalm 69 well, but Jesus sings it better. For Christ’s words rang out even as the world went black, with hell’s fury before him and a rag stuffed down his throat. David felt underwater, but Jesus suffocated and drowned. While we are continually with the Lord (Psalm 73:23), Jesus was the Lamb left to the wolves. If Jesus trusted God there, can we not trust him here?

Here — in the majesty of a love that, as the old hymn says, is “vast, unmeasured, boundless, free, rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me” (“O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus”). Those who swim in that ocean endure hailstorms and silence without turning to stone. They may wince at their ugly travel scrapbook, but they count on a last page that glitters. Their hearts are soft, their prayers frequent, their requests risky. Instead of withdrawing at the Lord’s “no,” they pray all the more, knowing George Herbert to be right when he calls prayer the “soul’s blood” and the “church’s banquet.”

When the mysteries of life are rightly ordered by the majesty of God, we sing like Jesus, David, and all the saints resting in “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

Mom with the stroller, 38-week belly, and purse full of snacks: Do you believe the resurrected Jesus says to you, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18–19)?

Believe it. Jesus sees you and commands as much. He hasn’t overlooked the small hand in yours or the little sleep you’re operating on. He isn’t put off by the noise of your toddler or the fullness of your days. Our Lord commissions mothers with the same words given to Peter, James, and John. Mothers bless the nations and their children by living out the Great Commission in the world as only they can.

His command isn’t limited to moms translating the Bible someplace humid with spiders. The commission isn’t watered down if you find yourself in a Midwestern cul-de-sac. What may seem ordinary about your local witness is, in reality, as stunning as the multitude of stars encircling Abraham.

Father of a Billion Mothers

One reason Jesus references the Abrahamic covenant in the Great Commission is to show that salvation is no longer limited to the Jews. Abraham was called to be a blessing to the nations (Genesis 12:1–3). The means of blessing the nations in Matthew 28:18–20 is making disciples of Jesus. In him, salvation comes not just to Jews but to Gentiles. And Gentiles are everywhere. You fulfill Jesus’s command when you disciple the girl in youth group and bear witness at family reunions. What Jesus accomplished on the cross assures us that the person within reach matters to God. His mission, his heart, is set on all peoples, both the exotic and the most familiar.

We should never downplay the mission of moms here, wherever here might be. At the same time, we should also remember that God does send many moms there, to the darkest corners of the planet. They stand with their households as luminous cities on hard-to-reach hills, for “how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” (Romans 10:14).

For these women — for me — to be both a missionary and a mom can feel like being called to play the tree on set for the school play. A necessary role, but in no way desirable. We have to be there, but we’re all background and support. We obey and go, but out of duty to some secondary commissioning. We don’t expect God to make disciples of all nations through the vessel of a mother pulled by her string of kids.

But there are around two billion mothers on the globe, and four babies born every second. When my husband and I visit village homes in an isolated region of the world to share the good news, we meet countless mothers and grandmothers with laps full of wide-eyed children. These women stare blankly at the name Jesus. Who will reach them? Who can relate to the love that inflates your heart at first meeting, the wonders of shared noses and taste buds, the pain of childbearing, the demands of homemaking, and the need to later release those you’ve cradled in your arms? Who better to give them Christ than mothers who share their joys and scars?

Death, the Attention-Getter

After a handful of years on the mission field, the most frequent opportunity I get to share the gospel relates to how I raise my kids. It’s not because of our picture-perfect moments or saintly routines. The attention-getter is always death. I lay down my life for my children because Christ did it first for me. I can love my kids at their worst because my Lord delighted to save me while I slapped his face and pulled at his beard. That’s otherworldly.

“Motherly weakness is good soil for gospel seeds.”

When we patiently discipline the flailing toddler, we copy the God who gathers even the wiliest of sheep into his embrace (Isaiah 40:11). When we study their scribbled drawings and clap for cartwheels, we mirror the God who delights to save us and sings over us like a proud papa (Psalm 18:19; Zephaniah 3:17).

Our weakness as moms is our strength. The boundaries, limits, and frailties that uniquely mark motherhood have the power to forge genuine friendships with women around the world. When I had morning sickness and lived by the toilet bowl in a land of abrasive curry, I’ll never forget the way my house-helper stroked my hair with tears in her own eyes, or the special snack my neighbor fried for me when I admitted how sad I felt postpartum. Motherly weakness is good soil for gospel seeds.

What if, instead of resenting our roles and responsibilities, we used them to win women from every tribe, tongue, and nation? We might borrow the tenacity of the shrewd manager in Luke 16, who used earthly wealth to gain friends and a future. With a measure of cleverness, might we use our motherly particularities to advance the kingdom of God?

Bless the Nations — and Your Children

Not only will the nations be glad when mothers go and make disciples; our children will be blessed — both now and later. Many parents are consumed with the now part, placing children in the center of their own solar systems, with enough extracurriculars, playdates, and field trips in orbit to keep them happy and on the path to supposed success. Because kids come in cute little packages, we can forget they are human image-bearers, just like us, who can’t be satisfied with vacations or the entire Christmas list under the tree. They were made for more.

Like the pirates in their storybooks, they crave the gold of the gospel and nothing less. They live in a warzone and require bolstering. If we make them the star attraction, expect little, and merely keep them busy, we place them in a sandcastle that’s easily dismantled by the waves of trial that are surely ahead.

Children will be blessed in the long run if their moms come alive at Jesus’s command on the mountain. Mothers who believe their Lord is with them in the task will take risks, abandoning the safety of their ships for stormy waters like Peter did. As a result, their blessed kids will watch Scripture play out in the day-to-day, as they see mom trust God like the widow who gave her last coin, or as they watch her mimic the Father who bridges the gap to find the lost lamb. They will hear their mothers’ prayers and watch the feast that returns from her insufficient bread and fish. Her earthen vessel will shine into the shadowed places of the world and onto the faces of her children.

Moms, don’t move toward the nations as some reincarnated Hudson Taylor or Amy Carmichael. Don’t waste time envying the free-spirited personality and bug-tolerance of the missionary of your dreams. Jesus sees you. And your children. He doesn’t pine for future diaper-less days when you’ll finally work like a well-oiled machine. He commissions you in the hectic present to go and make disciples.

So, make disciples of the unengaged, the people around your breakfast table, and the mom you meet at the park. One day, you’ll find yourself in a sea of white robes before the throne, surrounded in part by the fruit of your labor, physical and spiritual children standing as “oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified” (Isaiah 61:3).

I had imagined mothering a large family would warm my world like a well-lit wood-burning stove. You would open the doors to our house and, like the music box of my childhood, a singular, sweet tune would play. You’d be welcomed by giggling children, prancing about like good-natured foals in a grassy field.

Moving across the world and living in a different culture didn’t squash my dreams of a houseful of children — it just made them more flavorful. We would serve the poor together, enjoy simple pleasures, and raise goats for the glory of God.

I am now six children in. The music box of our home often plays in a minor key, and on any given day my good-natured foals may look more like moody house cats hiding under the bed, ready to claw.

Children are spicy, not merely sweet. The weight of raising them is so complex it’s tempting to throw in the towel and settle for a hobby like collecting spoons. When their pain is your pain, when you sin in front of them and against them, when their behavior has you cringing in embarrassment, the task feels impossible and somewhat akin to death.

The Bible says kids are gifts from God, even a reward (Psalm 127:3), but if we’re honest, some days they feel more like leeches, sucking us dry of all time and energy.

Oddly Wrapped Gifts

Where we live now, people stick to one or two kids. They count our parade in disbelief and click their tongues in disapproval. It’s common to hear grown-ups here call children, especially the boisterous ones, little satans. That’s pretty offensive. For all my failures as a parent, at least I don’t call them that.

However, aren’t we Westerners often guilty of pursuing our personal goals so ruthlessly that our children seem in the way of bigger and better things? They are costly to our bodies, schedules, and wallets. Their little years can feel like a case of chickenpox, a season to get through as quickly as possible.

It’s natural to call children gifts from God when they emerge from the womb, stand on stage with combed hair, and make quilted forts in tranquility. In such moments, we swell with pride at our vibrant olive shoots and shiny arrows. But are they still rewards from our Lord when their anger is red-hot, they’ve been vomiting all night, and they harbor stony hearts?

Lord of the Little Ones

When such rewards look as desirable as a pair of socks unwrapped on Christmas morning, we look to the Giver of all things. Clustered inside of Mark 9:33–10:45, Jesus makes not one but three important statements about the value of little ones. We must close our fleshly eyes and set our minds on the Spirit to see them as Jesus does (Romans 8:5). Here, we discover that, to God, children are nothing like unwanted socks and everything like reward.

Greatest Among the Lowest

First, Jesus says, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me” (Mark 9:37). The context of these words helps us make sense of what Jesus is saying. On their way to Capernaum, the disciples passed the time by ranking each other’s importance. Instead of reprimanding them immediately, however, Jesus waits until they are reclining in a home. Perhaps he thought the issue called for a quiet room with quieted hearts.

He asks them about their conversation earlier. Where words once flowed like the milk and honey of Canaan, they suddenly evaporate. The disciples squirm in awkward silence (Mark 9:34). Jesus doesn’t need them to answer; he knows every case and point. But instead of belittling their desire for greatness, he corrects their means of measurement. The real measuring stick is lowliness, the man who is “last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35).

“We serve the lowest in order to gain the Greatest.”

He has their attention. They curiously watch the child called into the middle of the room. It’s here Jesus tells them that by welcoming children in his name, they welcome God himself. To become a servant to the weak, to the likes of children — those who normally come last and contribute little — is to understand and enter into the heart of God. We serve the lowest in order to gain the Greatest.

Why are children gifts from this first statement of Jesus? Because they shine a spotlight on true greatness and usher in God himself.

Protector of the Weak

Jesus’s second statement about kids, just five verses later, is a grim warning. Still seated among the small, Jesus says, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea” (Mark 9:42). Does this warning sound over-the-top in an age that cultivates and celebrates the sexual curiosities and “gender choices” of children? Is a drowned man too violent a picture for those who lead children away from Jesus? In a society that prizes personal truths, such a warning may sound irrelevant at best, morbid and immoral at worst.

However, if we pass over Jesus’s words too quickly, we miss the protective heart of a father who treasures children. The judgment awaiting those who mislead Jesus’s most vulnerable followers is grave and guaranteed. Scripture is full of the Father’s protective care of kids, commanding fathers not to “provoke [their] children to anger” (Ephesians 6:4) and assuring us that the angels of believing children “always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 18:10).

Why are children gifts from this second statement of Jesus? Because only the most valued gifts require this extent of safe-keeping.

Kids Hold the Key

The third statement is found in Mark 10:13–16. Jesus’s attention has turned from the Pharisees toward his tiniest listeners, who flutter about him like butterflies on sweet-smelling hyacinth. He blesses their small heads with what must have been a smile, even laughter. Such tenderness is lost on the disciples, who rebuke the families for wasting valuable time. The Lord is grieved by their jumbled priorities. The biggest advocate of the young turns their rebukes around: “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:14–15).

Kids hold the key to the kingdom. Children enter the world wearing nothing and needing everything. They cry for things they can’t even name. God isn’t surprised that we come filthy and poor. It’s his good plan. We don’t look to our 4-year-olds to pitch in on the mortgage or do their chores to earn a hug. How much more does our perfect Father love us through Jesus, not merit of our own? Instead of rebuking the children, Jesus invites them into his very embrace. It’s an invitation with one requirement: weakness.

“On their best and worst days, children are forever rewards and gifts.”

Why are children gifts from this third statement of Jesus? Because they teach us what our God is like and how salvation works.

The More Children, the Jollier

These three statements made by Jesus are sandwiched by adults acting grown-up in the worst kind of way — people grown-away from the One they need most: religious leaders trying to trick Jesus on the hot topic of divorce to look smart (Mark 10:2), a rich man who walks away from true treasure (Mark 10:17–31), and the Sons of Thunder calling dibs on the VIP seats of heaven (Mark 10:35–40).

The world may continue to call kids little satans. If we aren’t careful, we too will overlook and resent these noisy, messy, impossible mercies. Our houseful isn’t as neatly packaged as I had imagined. Our bathroom hosts many tearful retreats. Nevertheless, Jesus is clear that on their best and worst days, children are forever rewards and gifts.

Above one of my daughter’s beds is a canvas she painted of our stick-figure family, with these words crayoned above their heads: “The More Children, the Jollier!” What a good little theologian.

Our family serves in the Himalayan mountains, with the desire to see the church spread and flourish far into the unengaged villages confettied on these snowy peaks. The people here, as you might imagine, have a grit that I haven’t inherited from my suburban childhood. Wrinkled shepherds lead their goats to menacing heights with learned ease. If you peek inside a brightly painted cement home, you might see a woman browning onions over a fire, her daughter wringing out clothes, and her toddler sleeping to the buzz of cartoons.

I’ve always dreamed of this sort of a place. As a middle-schooler, I read Jesus Freaks aloud to the kids at my art table, and when playing Would You Rather on the topic of death, I would argue that martyrdom is the best way to go out. If I could have seen the place where I would raise my children, I would have thought all of my dreams had come true.

What I didn’t expect was that life here would feel like a meat-tenderizer to the heart. I didn’t see the grief coming in like a tidal wave. I’m learning a language that puts me in situations where I’m exposed and embarrassed. We are always the ones asking questions and bending our preferences to better serve those around us. Homeschooling five kids and cooking food from scratch doesn’t make me feel like Wonder Woman, but just very, very tired. How was I to know how sharp the sting of this calling would be, the pain of dying daily?

I have formed a bad habit when I’m hurting. When too many guests come for chai and my character is as robust as the brown apple core in my toddler’s sticky grip, I exit mentally. I cherry-pick a golden memory and think how those were the days.

Imagined Land of Yesteryear

The past is a commonplace to run for escape. Isn’t the entire world wishing for life to go back to normal, before COVID reared its ugly head? How often do we pine after the freedoms of life before kids, only to ache for that noisy house a decade later? Don’t we wish relationships could morph back to what they had been before the argument? If only time could rewind the consuming cancer, the regretted affair, and the old age from surprising us.

When the call to live in the present feels like cruelty, dealt out by God’s own hand, we can drown in self-pity and enter an ugly world. A world based on our memories of the past, but altered. Everything was right back then. Such good old days are often talked about in passing, and most people agree how much better it would be if only we could return. We don’t realize the damage at stake in allowing our brains and hearts to live in this imagined land of yesteryear.

“We don’t realize the damage at stake in allowing our brains and hearts to live in this imagined land of yesteryear.”

The worst part in exchanging the present for the past is that we can make ourselves gods. We become interpreters of what’s good and what’s not. We don’t lean on the Lord’s providence, but think we know what we need. We remember ourselves ten pounds thinner and everyone a lot happier than they truly were. We are most deceived about ourselves, the memories usually a highlight reel of us at our prime.

Running Somewhere

Maybe you aren’t tempted to live in the past like me. But Luke 15 makes a good case that all of us are running somewhere when the present feels difficult to swallow. Here are two sons discontent at home. When life isn’t what they want, the younger son runs to another country to feed his appetite for pleasure (Luke 15:11–13). Meanwhile, the older brother stays physically near his dad, but his heart is far from home (Luke 15:28–32).

Where are we running when life is not what we want it to be? Perhaps we seek success, to create a comfortable home, or to be thought well of in our workplace and church. If we seek escape in these places, as I have in memories of the past, we won’t like where we end up. Life away from the Father is empty. Like a popped balloon, joy whooshes out and we are left limp, deflated. The sons’ attempts of finding life elsewhere leave them homeless and toiling like slaves (Luke 15:14–16, 29).

Even if we have a lifetime of sermons in our head, do we live what we claim to know? If we did, how could we ever run from someone so ready to love us, who waits with unparalleled patience and pursues us wherever we are, however painful the present moment? God wants us home with him. So much so that he left perfection for a world writhing in pain. He took on the violence of hell so that his children wouldn’t have to.

Home Among the Thistles

Maybe we are at a crossroads. Perhaps, like myself, your shoes are well-traveled. You’ve also formed bad habits in order to escape the places where life hurts the most. You’ve called God names and aren’t certain you can live with the one who ordained life’s present pain.

Look again at Luke 15 and dare to believe this is your story, too. The house is alive with music, and the table is set. You smell meat roasting in herbs and touch the silk of the slippers placed on your feet. See your Father run to embrace you. Hear his laughter that fills your heart with a happiness you were born to enjoy.

“We can make our home among the thistles because God promises to be there too.”

Or hear the father’s words to his older child: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31). These words are for us, right now. Do we believe it? If so, we can make our home among the thistles because he promises to be there too. He will never, ever leave us. And because we have his promised nearness, all that is his is now laid before us as a feast. Every spiritual blessing is at our fingertips when we live at home in our Father (Ephesians 1:3). Especially when our circumstances are January gray, he’s waiting for us to see the rainbow of his love.

Black-Edged Envelopes

Charles Spurgeon once testified,

The worst days I have ever had have turned out to be my best days, and when God has seemed most cruel to me, he has then been most kind. If there is anything in this world for which I would bless him more than for anything else, it is for pain and affliction. I am sure that in these things the richest, tenderest love has been manifested to me. Our Father’s wagons rumble most heavily when they are bringing us the richest freight of the bullion of his grace. Love letters from heaven are often sent in black-edged envelopes. The cloud that is black with horror is big with mercy. . . . Fear not the storm, it brings healing in its wings, and when Jesus is with you in the vessel the tempest only hastens the ship to its desired haven.

I am receiving more black-edged envelopes right now than I would care for. Dying daily has been less like Perpetua facing the beasts, and more like getting out of bed every morning to face the responsibilities of a calling that requires an unsavory dose of humility. This painful present, this everyday death is unnoticed by most, and as with the objects in a room when the lights are off, I can’t seem to find the outline of my old identity.

And yet, the storm of today will not end in shipwreck. I’m not at the random mercy of the winds. The current rolling of thunder and high waves only assist me in getting home safe and sound. The presence of my Father and his continual invitation has repeatedly snapped me back from the past, allowing me to see the wonders in front of my face, like my children, the food on my plate, and the way the goats follow the voice of their shepherd down the valley with the sun dripping into the horizon.