It can be very difficult to leave our parents and hometown and strike out on our own. Anne Morrow Lindberg, who knew many partings with family, wrote in GIFT FROM THE SEA, “It is a difficult lesson to learn – to leave one’s friends and family. For me, the break is the most difficult. Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It is like an amputation, I feel. A limb is being torn off.”
Sometimes we face a choice between honoring parents and family, and obeying God. Abraham showed faith when he left for Haran. Troubles soon began, but there were hidden blessings. We must value obedience to Christ more than loyalty to family.
God often has “a greater good” in his master plan when uprooting his children from their earthly families.
“Why are you here?” the Indian women asked missionary Amy Carmichael. “Where are your relatives? Why have you left them and come here? What does the government give you for coming here?” During her first years in India, Amy probably asked herself the same questions. But she’d heard God’s gentle call,
and stayed.
Not much later, she learned about the appalling practice of using young girls for temple prostitution. Soon Amy devoted her life to saving them. Taking in temple runaways, she developed the Dohnavur Fellowship, which grew into nurseries, bedrooms, a hospital, classrooms, workrooms, gardens, farms and pastures, hostels, playing fields, and other resources for nine hundred residents.
Before she died, Amy began writing letters to each person in the Dohnavur Fellowship. She considered them all her family. Like Amy, our obedience could redeem many people. Saying good-bye to our family may make it possible for our life to have infinitely greater impact on them and on the world than if we’d stayed.