Pushing Back Darkness

I’ve been home for a couple of days now.  It seems the rainy season has followed me.

I’ve been joking about my return to cheeseburgers, the joy of high-speed Internet and my coffee maker.

It’s true one of the many blessings of spending time in poverty is you return with a fresh contentment with what you already have – a new realization of the ease and comfort in which we live.

Almost anyone I talk to about spending time in Africa, a good deal of what people are fascinated with is how little the children have and how much we have.

Exclamations of, “We’re just so blessed, and we don’t even realize it!” People think it is brave and sacrificial to separate myself from my things, my comfort.

Follow me for a minute on this.

Are we blessed because of our comfort?

Only in the richest nation in the history of humanity could concoct such a far-fetched notion of the Prosperity Gospel (God wants you healthy, wealthy and wise) and keep a straight face and hands raised in praise.

If this is true, God is failing miserably the 5/6 of the planet that doesn’t live in a developed nation.  And He must just be completely turning His back on the bottom billion of the planet, (Sierra Leone is in this category) who live on less than $1 a day and suffer from diseases that have been eradicated in our societies for decades and centuries.

The truth, and I say this with the deepest love and desire for my brothers and sisters here to really grasp this, is we’re wrong about our comfort.

God is not failing.

God’s economy is upside down.

The real awakening in serving the poor is experiencing how alive and tangible the Spirit of Christ is in the world’s ghettos and the halls of an orphanage where children starved most of their younger lives.

He’s alive in the villages of Rookbop where lack of clean drinking water steals life and joy.

His preference is for the ugly, the impoverished, the weak, the forgotten, the smelly, the leper, the polio victim, the amputee, the orphan, the widow, the trafficked girl who has been tattooed, branded and sexually abused since her village was burned down and her family murdered.

Read Matthew 19:23.  Read Matthew 5.  Read Luke 18:18.  Read James 1:27.

God moves through suffering and pain.  If it was His plan to reconcile the world through the pain and suffering of His son, why do we think it is any different for us?

Show me a Christ-follower who lives in the deep waters of God, who inspires you, and who walks closely with the Lord, and I will show you someone who has suffered.

I am not saying that God wants us miserable, poor and sick!  Just the opposite! I am saying there is a higher reality that is so difficult for us in America to realize.  God’s greatest calling and interaction in our lives is not to bring us comfort and ease.

John 10:10 tells us, ‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

This is the big secret.  Despite all of our heartache, sorrow and pain – His love, joy and comfort are real.

This is the Good News.

God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

It’s the awe inspiring realization that He came to reach into the ghettos of the forgotten and, “…bring good news to the diseased; to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to sex slave, and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD And the day of vengeance of our God for all who have been wronged! To comfort all who mourn because they cannot feed their children, and give them the oil of gladness instead of mourning; The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness; The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.”

By grace, I am past the shock of taking in the endless poverty and filth when I go. I have stopped focusing on the open sewers, littered streets, and body odor.

Mercifully now, I see the beautiful red earth, vibrant greens, the bateek dresses in every color and size, the ebony skin and deep brown eyes wide with smiles. I don’t care how much I sweat!

I see beauty unrestrained.  And I am overwhelmed with the love and presence of God.

You see if we have a bad day, we can watch a movie, eat a pint of Haggen-Dazs, or go buy a new outfit.  If our heart is hurting there is a trinket of every shape and size that medicates and numbs us.  If we are sick, we have doctors.

If you’re poor, you have no options. You have Christ and the relationships around you.  That’s it.

In Sierra Leone, it has been my experience that relationships and authentic love for God, among believing Christians, is what live is centered around.

The people around you actually matter the most.  Friends are intimately acquainted with their friends’ problems.  “You need a wife?  Let me help arrange that!”

They are deeply entwined in the messy business of each other and it is the highest priority of life.

They spend hours talking and enjoying each other.  What else are you going to do?

And that’s the big secret.  From Mosaic law to present day, God commands us over and over and over to esteem highly and serve the weak and foolish things of society as His preference.

To engage this is to live life to its fullest.

We have medical clinics to operate, children to feed, businesses to start, churches to build, hands to hold, money to raise, tears to shed, and the deep, intimate love of Christ to spread.

Join us.

http://www.4-him.net/