I recently read the following passage in a septet of poems by Rabindranath Tagore, a late nineteenth century/early twentieth century poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. It touched my heart as beautiful imagery of missions & developing lasting relationships, through the common bond of the Creator, within a culture different than my own.

“Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger. I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forgot that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest. Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar. When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the One in the play of the many.”