The View from My Office

Normally, my office window looks out on the woods that border our back yard.  I enjoy watching the robins look for food and the blue jays chase each other through the tree branches.  As autumn comes, I can see the changes in the leaves as the woods take on a golden glow.  Now that the day lengths are shorter, I am sometimes already working when the sun rises over the treetops.   It is a peaceful view, and I am grateful for it.

Through the years, however, the view out my “office” window has varied.  Recently it was the view of an airplane wing atop a cushion of clouds on a blue sky since my desk was the tray of the seat in front of me.  

Later that evening, it became the airport as we waited for connections to Uruguay.  Hundreds of people passed by on their way to their gates to fly to places around the world.  Charlie and I sat together working out our presentation for the conference.  After a while, it was time to give up our little table in the "Marketplace" and move to the gate.  There our "office" became a place of rejoicing when Alejandra and Sergio Herrera, our missionaries in Mexico, arrived.  It had been years since I had seen them.

The next day my view changed to that of blue skies, a sandy beach, and a gray-blue bay as I sat at my “desk” in the meeting room of a conference center outside of Montevideo, Uruguay.  What a blessing it was to be surrounded by IPM’s missionaries from all over Latin America as we met for a regional conference.  Some of them we had already met.  Others we were meeting for the first time.  When their voices lifted together in song, it gave me a little glimpse of what a joy heaven will be.

At the end of the conference it changed again. One day it was a panorama of pastoral quietness as we sat in a car for hours driving from Montevideo to the north of Uruguay.  Spring flowers in varying hues of yellow, blue, purple, and peach bordered the roads.  Mile after mile we saw sheep grazing in vast expanses of pastureland.  Then we passed ranches and dairy farms where cattle grazed.  It could have been Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.

Later that week it was the view out a window of a house in a neighborhood of Mercedes, Argentina.  Houses border a dirt road.  Inside the gate, green grass grew and extended outside the gate too.  Dogs barked as they wandered up and down the street.  Inside the living room of this small house more than twenty people gathered to learn about Hermeneutics.  Charlie taught through a translator, a missionary who has been here in Argentina for many years.

Tomorrow it will change again.  Yet in every case, I am grateful.  I have a laptop computer that I can take with me so that I can work from anywhere.  God has given me eyes to see the beauty around me wherever we go in the world, and He has given us opportunities to serve Him in many different places.  What a blessing to have an "office" that changes multiple times throughout the year.  I am blessed.