perfectly all right to us look indecent
to someone else; and things that look indecent to us may look
perfectly all right to someone else!

A young missionary goes inland to her first station. "I'm not going to
look frumpy!" she declares, and takes all her prettiest dresses. When
she comes out in gay colors that are not worn in that backward area,
or in short sleeves when everyone else has elbows duly covered, her
senior missionary attempts to suggest a bit of alteration in her
wardrobe. All suggestions, however, are indignantly rejected. She
plunges enthusiastically into work with the children, using pictures
very effectively to supplement her limited vocabulary. One day her two
favorite scholars do not appear, and she asks her helper, a bright
high school girl, the reason. The embarrassed and evasive answer does
not satisfy, and she keeps after the poor girl until finally she is
told the truth. An hour later her senior missionary finds her weeping
in her room.

"She said," she chokes, "she said----that their mother won't let them
come any more because I----because I can't be a good woman; I dress
like a--a prostitute!"

What is wrong? Why does the eager young missionary have to go through
all this heartache? Just because she is not willing to see with
someone else's eyes. Her own standards are the only right ones. She
learns by hard experience the fact that other people _do_ see things
differently from us, and that it _does_ make a difference. After all,
this is their country, and these are their customs. We cannot expect
them to adjust to ours. It is the foreigner in the strange land who
has to adjust to the ways of that land.

To learn a new language, the ear must be alert to hear just that
little turn with which a sound is pronounced that makes all the
difference between a foreign and a native accent. To become adjusted
to a new people, the eye and the heart must be alert to perceive
clearly, to understand and take in their feelings and their reactions.
May God grant us the seeing eye and the hearing ear!

* * * * *

"Oh, they're terribly strict at that Bible school!" someone remarks.
"There are rules about how long your dresses must be, and how you must
wear your hair. I wouldn't stand for it! Why, it's things like that
that give Christianity a bad name!"

Perhaps. At the same time, one who has shown that he is willing to
give up his own standards and conform to someone else