When I graduated from college, I became a short-term missionary, assigned to (then) West Pakistan.  I taught for six months in Lahore at Kinnaird College for Women.  One fine April day the Bishop invited me for tea and informed me that he was transferring me to Karachi to teach at the brand-new Trinity Methodist Girls’ High School, which would be opening in July.  I could have two months at language school before I went south to the seacoast.

Lahore then was drastically different from Karachi.  Lahore was historic, settled, cultured.  Karachi, a mere fishing village at the time of partition from India in 1947, was a bustling metropolis of three million in 1959, a major commercial center, and the capital of the young country.

 I arrived there on an overcast, hot, muggy day, and was greeted by the much older woman who would be my “boss” and my roommate.  Three weeks after I arrived, Mary left for home, permanently, due to health concerns.  I was left in charge of seven small elementary schools and a new high school just opening but not yet completed.  My language skills were minimal to non-existent, and I was not supposed to live alone.  In addition, I encountered poverty and suffering of a kind and extent that I had never before experienced.  

The cultural shock was overwhelming.  In those weeks I read Psalms and wondered myself if God had forsaken me.

I learned that God is present with us in all circumstances, and that there really are angels. They came in the forms of  a driver who was well-acquainted with the city,  missionaries  offered me a room for several weeks, another missionary who shepherded me through the intricacies of finances and how to “get things done” with government agencies, a marvelous principal of the new school, and other new friends. 

In a few short months, I was back in my own apartment with new missionaries from the U.S. to share the work load, and the new school was fully operational.

I thought of this chapter in my life in connection to the theme of this booklet: our struggles and the gifts and affirmations which come to us in, through, in spite of them.  I have never felt so alone as I did the night I watched Mary’s plane take off for New York that July night.  Through it all I gained confidence in myself, and started to develop a global worldview.  Most importantly, I developed a new, stronger relationship with God.  I know that God is with me, even in the dark times, the strange times, the tired-as-a-dog times.

The writer of this Isaiah passage reminds us that those who are righteous servants of God, are ones who work to bring about peace and justice will prevail. We who believe that the prophecy of a Savior was fulfilled in and through Jesus Christ must be agents of making his vision of peace and justice evident in the world.

Jesus said, “I am with you always.”    Amen.