A Missionary Named Jay

I wish you could have met Jay and his wife. They were the leaders of the very first Bible study I attended as a new believer. They had been missionaries in Africa most of their lives and dearly loved by the congregation. Our paths didn’t cross very long, but I remember him because he used to laugh at some of my answers in the Wednesday night study that he led. It wasn’t an offensive laugh or a mocking laugh either… in fact it seemed kind of private… I didn’t understand it at the time…. I remember considering if I should be offended, but decided to just ignore it.

Several years later, I heard the laugh again. But this time it was when my grandmother first gazed my firstborn…her very first great grandchild. There was the laugh! It took me a few days to place where I had heard it… then I remembered Jay. That was Jay’s laugh! That’s when I realized Jay had been delighting in the new life he was seeing in me. It touched me, because I heard he and his wife were going through a difficult time…. yet whatever his difficulties, I suspect they were health related, God used the freshness of life in another believer to refresh him. My life moved on, but I can’t tell you how many times God used Jay’s example to remind me to look at others with a kingdom perspective.

And thinking about it today, there is something that I am still learning from Jay… it is not so much what you say… but who you are. His laugh was an overflow of who he was… and where his heart was with God. Amen?