What a Wonderful World

I think the world is an amazing place. And I’m grateful to be experiencing so many different aspects of this world, though it takes me far away from my home and its familiarity.

As I was meeting with our team this morning, I looked around at the small group of seven I was sharing with. We each came from a different country – Cameroon, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Spain, Canada, America (me!), and England. Despite any cultural or geographic differences, we all share the same Father and His heart. It’s amazing to me to see how He works in such different ways in each of us, and the social and cultural barriers we place in our lives are non-existent in His plan for each of us.

This past year has been about breaking down these barriers, and adapting to new ways of life and tolerating attitudes and actions that may seem strange to me at first but are products of upbringing in places so different than me. Being different doesn’t make something wrong. And being different than me and my customs and what I think makes sense is certainly a necessary facet of life I need to be exposed to. I see Westerners (not necessarily Americans) in restaurants or shops, being so picky and demanding about their food or other products, bearing the attitude that “the customer is always right.” I feel embarrassed to be one of them sometimes, wishing they would just realize they are in a much different place and things don’t work like that here. (For Chinese:
“It’s food … eat it.”) It’s important to adapt to your environment, and know that a nation of a billion isn’t going to change its ways to adapt to you, but rather it must be the other way around. And learning that people in other parts of the world behave differently, for different reasons, is an important lesson to learn. You may even discover that their way of life makes sense when you never thought it would. I certainly felt this way about chopsticks (anyone see that Seinfeld where he talks about chopsticks? “You know they’ve seen the fork”). But, as I use them more and more it doesn’t really matter to me to use a fork or chopsticks because I don’t see much difference to them when eating Chinese dishes or anything else prepared here (they know people use chopsticks, so things are already cut up for you or prepared in a way that works with chospticks).

Being in an environment where it’s not a given that someone knows what 4^th of July is, or even what Tylenol and Aspirin are (they use something called Panadol instead) has sometimes been frustrating as it is really the little things that get to you. Yet I’m relieved to know the whole world doesn’t follow my customs and traditions. It makes for a much more unique, and awe-inspiring planet, and I can see more fully its many colors and thus the simply astounding creation that He has brought into being.