Blessed Beyond the Curse

Lately I've been overwhelmed with sorrow over the lives of the people I care about here. I'll spare you the details. I'll sum up by saying that life is difficult and bitter for just about everyone on the planet. People are victims of all kinds of evils, as well as doing evil deeds themselves. These past few weeks, my heart has broken over the hurt my friends have experienced because of the selfishness and cruelty of others.

A recent example caused me to consider the sovereignty of God and find encouragement and hope beyond what I expected. In this situation, rumors and conjecture have caused me to fear that a friend has been involved in some destructive activities and may still be. From what I know of the situation, this friend may be both the victim of an evil and an active participant. My heart sank at the idea. All I could say when I prayed about this issue was, "Lord, say it isn't so!"

"Say it isn't so" isn't much of a prayer. I believe that God is powerful enough to work a miracle that could cause things that have happened not to have happened. But as far as I know he never has worked this way. Asking him to undo past events seems kind of silly to me.

This led me to think about what would be a better prayer, how would he be likely to act in this situation? It occurred to me that when God intervenes in the lives of people, he almost always goes far beyond undoing harm done. Revelation 21:5 says, "Behold, I am making all things new!" He doesn't just heal hearts and gloss over our pain. He makes us new.

When Jesus secured salvation for those who would believe, he didn't just forgive their sin and give them a "get-out-of-hell-free" card. The Bible tells us we will be like Jesus. He will make us new. There will be no more death or pain or mourning or crying. He will wipe away our tears, and make us new. Romans 8 says that even creation will be made new, freed from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

And so, as I look at the situations I see around me here, I don't simply wish away the corruption and abuse. I don't look at my friends' broken hearts, broken families, or broken bodies and say, "Lord, say it isn't so." I say, "Lord, let these orphans trust you so that they will bring you glory when you make them new." He can give them healed hearts and new lives on earth. And in the end, they can be made new along with everything else.

I must be careful not to look around me and see all the suffering as reason to believe God is unjust or uncaring or impotent. The Biblical point of view reminds me that he has no intention of leaving things this way. For those who trust him, all things will be made new. He will not leave us in this condition forever.

So for the crippled boy who begs in the park, for the rape victims, for the physically abused, for the children of broken marriages, for those who live in fear of death or in guilt over their sin, I don't merely wish it weren't so. I know they can be made new if they only will trust the Savior.

Time Is On My Bad Side

I have the punctuality of a bus driver. What I mean is, I think in terms of minutes and seconds. When I was driving buses, I always showed up at least 5 minutes early for my shifts. If other drivers were 2 or 3 minutes late, I'd get irritated. My life is orderly when I can map out a schedule - in 15 minute increments - and execute it pretty much on time.

I can be flexible, but I don't really like to be. I pretend I prefer to be casual about time. But really, I can't handle that too much.

And so, of course, God drops me into a culture where time is kind of irrelevant.

Sure, some people have jobs in the city, or they go to school. Those people have some concept of showing up within a few minutes of a designated time. But most people come from backgrounds where their concept of time is broken down into days and weeks. They may be able to show up to work on time, but for social meetings they prefer to relax and follow the ways of the countryside.

Hence, my problem. This week I talked to my neighbor's son. I love this kid, so I offered to teach him English when he has free time. He says, "Saturday afternoon, I have time. Should I come find you or do you want to come find me?"

Question: What does "Saturday afternoon" mean? Does it mean between 12:01 and 4:59? Does it mean after the noon time rest - after 2pm? Does the afternoon end at a certain time? When does it begin?

Another friend wanted to hang out on Sunday. She told me, "Sunday I don't have to work. Come find me in the afternoon." I asked what time, she wouldn't say.

This is a huge problem for me - defining time. In the case of my neighbor's son. I went to look for him on Saturday around 1:30, he wasn't home. I waited in my house for a few hours - doing homework and tidying up - but he never came.

And so this is my life. People make vague plans. I wait around so that I won't miss them, but then I miss them. Or in other cases, I waste a bunch of time going off to find people, but they're not where they said they'd be when I get there. I don't want to appear over anxious, or uptight about punctuality. So I casually shrug off the missed opportunities to hang out, secretly stewing inside because of another wasted afternoon.

The really hard part is that I keep trying to measure my productivity by how much I get done in a day. But I look back over weeks and months, and it seems that all my efforts at being productive are thwarted not because of laziness or disorganization on my part, but because other people don't look at time the way I do.

Another difficulty is the feeling that people don't value me the way I do them. In America, I often was hurt by the tardiness of friends, because I felt they didn't respect me enough to respect my time. Here I feel like people forget me and go on without me. I shuffle my day's plans around the 'time' we said we'd meet. But then, because we never nailed down a time, we end up not meeting. So, once again, I feel that my time is not respected, and neither is my presence. Furthermore, I get stuck spending more time by myself, both in waiting for them and in missing my chance to hang out with them.

All I can say after all this, is I'm thankful for the prevalence of cell phones. Without them, I doubt I'd ever get to see any of my friends.

The Journey is Part of the Gift

When I first arrived over here, a mentor told me a story. An American living in Africa was making preparations to return home after many years working to make Christ known. A friend made a journey to deliver a gift to him before his departure. The man walked 4 days on bare feet to deliver a pair of shoes he'd woven out of grass. When the American saw that he'd walked so far, he was embarrassed and insisted that his friend didn't need to walk so far to deliver the gift. The African replied, "The journey is part of the gift."

My friend shared this story with me as a reminder that the traveling I do, the distance from home, the loneliness, the culture shock, the illnesses are all part of the gift I've come to distribute.

It's easy sometimes to feel like it's not worth it. I've made trips where the bus has gotten stuck in the mud so many times that a 5 hour ride has turned into 2 days. I've gotten lost in the woods in the rain. I've had to sleep on hard beds with spiders hanging overhead. There have been many places with no outhouses, long nights of stomach pain, back pain from sitting on low stools, and meals of boiled pig fat on rice. After some of these trips to the countryside, I'm tempted to give up and head back to America where you can find a sanitary bathroom at most 7-Elevens, sleep in a comfortable bed just about anywhere, and take a warm shower every day.

But then I remember that the journey is part of the gift. The hardship is part of the glory. Our salvation in Christ came at huge cost to him. The spread of the gospel comes with much persecution and hardship to those willing to follow Christ and make him known.

Nothing compares to the privilege of sitting around a fire in a village in the mountains and sharing the gospel with people who have never heard the name of Jesus. What could be more fulfilling than making him known? What could be more of a waste than running from my calling into the open arms of a comfortable life in America?

So until I get new instructions, I will try to remain faithful to what I believe God has given me to do. And I will try to remember that the journey is part of the gift.