What type of Christian am I trying to raise?

I have been wondering lately, with all my preaching and rantings about Christian faith building, "what type of Christians am I really trying to raise?"  Do I want to raise my girls to be radical Christians who lay it all on the line for Jesus, or am I just trying to raise polite church-goers?

Sometimes it scares me to think of raising radical Christians.  They do freakish things - like hear the voice of God ...and respond... and leave their mothers behind and move to Africa (yes you know who you are - I'll be talking about you later this week!).  Do I actually want that?  I'm sad to admit that I am not sure I do.  Maybe I just want nice girls who marry nice boys and volunteer to teach Sunday school and drive to my house for Sunday dinner with the grandkids.   That sounds good to me.  Radical Christians can have lives lived very far away, like in China.

Being an ancestry addict, I know in our family that moving to China is not far fetched.  This is my great x3 Aunt Arabella. 

She moved to Siam and then China.  She never came back. 

See, it's in the blood.  I have reason to fear!

Arabella Anderson, the daughter of Irish immigrants, was born in 1848 in New York State.  Hearing a missionary speak of the need for a school teacher to start the first Christian school in Siam, she felt the call of God to be that person.  She left the United States two months later and served in Siam and China for the next 50 years. 

When I first heard the basic facts of this story I did some quick math and realized her mother was dead when Arabella came back.  (I am so morbid!)  My momma's heart broke for Arabella's mother.  Here she had immigrated from Ireland, she didn't have her own mother around, and now her daughter up and moves to Siam!  The story gets worse for Mama Anderson, as her youngest daughter Sarah moves to China to be a missionary two years after Arabella.  Two radical Christians in one family ...ah this poor woman!   I was sure her momma life was bitter, and sad, and lonely and well.... sad.  But then my grandmother gave me a book which wrote about the work and life of Arabella.

These are the lines that caught my breath:

       "Her desire to become a foreign missionary was largely the fruit of home influence. Both parents were devoted to the cause of missions. Her father never forgot to intercede for the work at family prayers. Her mother had been quickened in the zeal for the work in youth by hearing a missionary to Russia; and it was her hope that her first born son might become a missionary..."

 

Momma Anderson's life was not sad, or bitter.  Momma Anderson was the radical!! She had been praying that God would use her children for His purposes. She knew exactly what it meant to move a continent away from family, yet her hope was that her child would become a missionary.  She prayed that her children's lives would advance God's kingdom, despite that it would take them away from her.  Her prayers were answered in her daughters.  It was the fruit she had prayed for. 

I am afraid if Momma Anderson was alive and came over for tea, she wouldn't like me.  She would probably find me shallow and selfish when it comes to the hopes of my children's lives. I wonder if she would see right through my talk of college-prep education and cultivating a love of Jesus and ask, "what fruits are you trying to grow here?"

Just as Arabella's missionary activities were credited to being the fruit of home influence, so too will it be with Sarah and Emily's lives.  I really do have to ask,  "what type of Christians am I trying to raise?"  Is it more important to me to have children who just live ordinary lives so they can be close to me, or do I want God's kingdom to advance through their lives?  Am I brave enough to pray like Mama Anderson that God will use my girls?  In the face of immeasurable poverty, an exploding spread of Islam, and gross injustices across the globe, can I really be so cold as to pray only that their lives will serve me?  If my heart is legitimately broken for the brokenness of this world, I have to start praying that my girls will indeed be radical.  I have to start praying that I can be radical. 

Momma Anderson did not live to see the full picture of Arabella's influence.  The fruit of her prayers.  But I own a small picture of the beginning of that harvest.

 

 

Arabella dared to radically live for Jesus.  She taught the first class of girls educated to read, write, sew and know God in Bangkok. This little picture was sent to me by the curator at the school's museum.  One hundred and thirty-eight years later Wittana Wittaya Academy is still a Christian school for girls in Bangkok.  I am sure Momma Anderson is looking down quite happy with the fruit of her radical prayers.