Being Left-Handed in a Right-Handed World

My wife and one of my daughters are left-handed, meaning that 25% of my family writes with their left hand.  This is almost double the percentage in the general population, which is around 13%.  If it is true that left-handed people are the only one's in their right minds, then I guess my family has been doubly blessed.  But most of the time my wife does not consider it a blessing to be left-handed in a right-handed world (despite the fact that she can celebrate International Left Handers Day with her left handed friends on August 13,).  While 13% of the population might be left-handed, 99.9% of the world is designed for right-handed people.  I found this out when I hurt by right thumb a few years ago, and again when I broke my right hand while living in Uganda.  Try starting your car with your left hand!  You have to be a contortionist just to reach around the steering wheel! The doctor who stitched up my cut was left-handed but was trying to cut the stitches with right-handed scissors.  It is not easy being left-handed at school either.  How about adapting to a right-handed desk, a right-handed pencil sharpener, and even a right-handed mouse.  Even potato peelers are right handed! (For a humorous look at how left-handed people are discriminated against in our society, click here.)

This explains a bit how missionaries around the world feel when they find themselves thrown headfirst into a new, radically different, and sometimes uninviting culture.  To put it mildly, they feel out of place.  The first months and sometimes even years are spent simply acclimating to the new culture.  Expecting new missionaries to thrive right out of the gate is like expecting an untrained runner to finish the Boston Marathon.  It will take time, training, patience, and endurance to finish the race.  ECM has missionaries serving in Uganda and Ghana, trying to both adapt to the cultures they live in and effectively serve as the hands and feet of Jesus in places where his love is so desperately needed (click here to read more about them!).  Why not pray for them today, and even consider writing them a note of encouragement?   They could probably use it!

What's Your Response Time?

From time to time, overwhelming and even terrifying needs look us right in the face and demand a response.  Whether we are on our front porch or an ocean from home, the uneasiness we feel is the same.  We are well aware of Jesus’ words, “What you have done for the least of these, you have done for me.”  But does that really apply to my life? We routinely think of excuses why his words don’t apply to our present situation, yet somehow they still gnaw at our conscience.  Perhaps I should be doing more.  Perhaps God expects more of me.

There is a tension that we all experience when we see a great need and then wonder how God would have us respond (for it is not if we will respond, but how we will respond).  At ECM we are in the business of responding, of being the hands and feet of Jesus, of reaching out to the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized in society, to children who can't do it alone.  And best of all, we have given you a way to help those children in Africa who so desperately need to hear and feel the love of Jesus, to experience His loving arms wrapped around them.

At ECM, we are trying to respond to the needs of these African children with the urgency they deserve.

What’s your response time?  (Click here to test it out!)