The Weather is Bad

THE CALL: SPRING/SUMMER 2022    |    5 MINUTE READ
TONY LEE, CREATIVE ACCESS GLOBAL WORKER

When COVID broke out, I was in East Asia. Ground zero. Everything began to quickly shut down. I realized it was time to come to the States. After a couple of months of reconnecting with friends and family, I was ready to go home—back to the country where I’ve been doing ministry for nearly four decades. I opened my computer to buy my plane tickets, a routine task for a global worker.

As I was beginning to research my return flights, I received a message from one of my local coworkers telling me that the country’s authorities had just announced that the country’s borders were closing the very next day! When I looked at the airline webpage, it was covered in red. All incoming flights to the country I was returning to had been cancelled. I couldn’t buy a ticket. I couldn’t go home.

I called one of my coworkers on the other side of the world, telling him how heartbroken I was that I couldn’t be with them. With tears streaming down both of our faces, my coworker told me, “The weather is too bad. You need to stay where you are.”

We haven’t been able to talk since. If we did, his life could be in danger.

I can still remember the day I knew this country in East Asia was my home. I was a young college student sitting in Hughes Auditorium at Asbury University. It was 1982, and during that service, my heart immigrated from Kentucky to East Asia. And when our airplane finally touched down in that country three years later, I turned to my wife and said, “I’m home.”

And now, after all these years? The weather is too bad? That country has been my home for four decades. Those people have been my people for four decades. And I’m supposed to just, what, sit here in this place that isn’t my home while my brothers and sisters suffer?

Why would God not have told me to buy those tickets one day earlier? I know the voice of God. I’ve walked with Him for decades, through storm after storm in dangerous places. Had He told me to buy those tickets just one day earlier, I wouldn’t have missed that voice. I would’ve heard Him speak.

But He didn’t. He said nothing.

Most people think this is my home, here in the States. Well-meaning and loving people often say, “Well, it’s better this way.” “It’s so dangerous over there.” “Well, Tony, this is your home.” “It must be nice to be home.” Or, “You’ve put in your years, maybe it’s time to come back home and retire.”

Do you know what it’s like to come to a place with all the religious freedoms one can imagine and see them taken for granted? If it’s too hot or too cold, we don’t go to church. If we have plans, we skip church. If we don’t like who’s preaching, we stay home. My brothers and sisters in East Asia are living out the book of Acts in real life. They risk their lives every time they meet, knowing the government is looking for them. But it doesn’t stop them. They keep meeting. Seeing the spiritual apathy here and knowing what my brothers and sisters are going through to simply get together makes me weep.

The last four decades haven’t been a temporary assignment for me. This isn’t a place I went to do a job, hoping one day I’d make it out alive so I could come ‘home.’ It’s a place where my brothers and sisters in Christ are. It’s the place where my wife and I have put down roots—deep roots. It’s the place where I’ve seen countless souls meet and encounter and fall in love with Jesus. It’s the place that faith on the front lines is lived out on a daily basis.

Have you been there? Have you had to wait for something, something you thought God made you for? It’s where I find myself. Waiting. Wrestling with God to try to understand what His plan is in this. Wrestling with God about His sovereignty. And let me tell you, God and I have had it out these last few months. The foundations on which I’ve built my faith have been shaken to the core.

But what is faith? Is it the assurance that everything will be okay? Is it the belief that God has made me to be enough? As I read the Scriptures, I don’t think it is. I think it’s something far greater.

It’s what Noah had when he built a boat to protect himself from something he could not yet see.

It’s what Abraham had when he obediently followed God to a place he did not know.

It’s what Sarah had when God told her she would have a child in her old age.

It’s what Esther had when she approached the king’s throne on behalf of her people.

And it’s what Joseph had during decades of trials, waiting for the dream God gave him to become reality.

And it’s my brothers and sisters in East Asia who have been severely beaten and imprisoned and separated from their families over the decades when they had non-government sanctioned materials, when they hosted outside teachers in their homes. It’s my brother in Christ who had a second-grade education, but through faith and prayer was granted the ability to read God’s Word.

These ancients endured suffering (and my brothers and sisters in East Asia are still enduring suffering), and they kept their faith even though they had not yet received their promise. And how did they keep going forward? They fixed their “eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2 NIV). They did not look inward; they did not look at the present circumstances; they looked at the Savior and set their face on Him.

For me, this means that I continue waiting. I will remain in a country that is not my home, waiting on the weather to get better. You and I should not “look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever” (1 Corinthians 4:18 NLT).

I cannot see God’s plan, and I cannot understand where He is leading. But I know this: if I keep my eyes on Him, I will weather this storm. It may not look how I envision it on the other side, but just like Noah, just like Abraham, just like Sarah, just like Esther, and just like Joseph, I serve a God who surpasses my understanding and whose plans are far greater than what I can imagine. I also serve a God who has faithfully paved the way for my people—and I’ve had a front-row seat for the last four decades. Why would He fail us now?

ACTION STEPS

PRAY: Is there something in your story that does not make sense? If you try to make sense of it with your own understanding, you will come up short. Find your story in the story of Jesus, and in His story, you will find peace and joy. Pray today for the bad weather you are enduring, asking God to sanctify you through it.

GO: Just like Abraham, is God calling you to a place that you do not yet know, or maybe to a place you do know? Connect today with a WGM mobilizer to see how your passions and God’s heart for the world can intersect. Start the conversation today.

GIVE: At WGM, we care for the spiritual well-being of our missionaries so that when the weather is bad, they have someone to bear the burden with them. Partner financially with WGM today through our Global Impact Fund.

Global Worker Bio: Tony Lee has been a global worker in East Asia for nearly four decades. He and his wife have three grown children. Tony is a father figure to countless believers in East Asia and represents the image of a loving and caring God to his people.