Hands and Feet

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.'"  Matthew 25:34-36

I have always known a privileged life - and for that I am thankful.  I have not known what it is like to be in need and rarely have I been left in want.  I have experienced pangs of hunger, but never known what it is like to be left hungry.  If I missed a meal, it was by choice, not a lack of food.  I am grateful and blessed and should thank God more for these blessing DAILY.

While I have never experienced poverty or hunger, it does not make me unsympathetic to the plight of those in these circumstances.  Before I moved to China, I thought that poverty looked like the men and women I had served in Soup Kitchens and saw panhandling on the side of the road in America.  When I moved to China, I thought that I knew what poverty looked like when I visited JL's home for the first time.  My in-laws have worked a hard life as rice farmers in rural South-Western China to raise, support, and educate 6 children.  Yet they remain joyful, gracious, and generous.  Then we visited one of JL's sisters in the migrant community.  It utterly broke my heart to see the sacrifices they were making in order to be able to give their children a better future.  They gave to us generously and offered us the best of what they had, which is something that amazes me.  (Check out my previous post on the Migrant Village)  However, it wasn't until just a few weeks ago that I have finally seen what REAL want and need are.

It is a rare day here in Colombo that I would not be approached by a person asking me for money.  In order to not see a poor person, I would have to not leave my house.  I do not doubt that most of these people are legitimately poor and hungry.  The cost of living in Sri Lanka is increasing daily while the value of the Sri Lankan Rupee is at an all-time low.  However, there are always some who will try to take advantage of others.  In general, JL and I give our spare change to the people we come across - especially those we can see are in great need, like those who are crippled or small children.

On this particular day, I was taking the bus.  It is the route that I travel 3 times a week to go to and from volunteering.  I like to sit by the windows so I can watch the people bustling around and the action at the various markets we pass by along the way.  It's just a simple pleasure that I enjoy, especially in during the morning commute.  However, my personal amusement and entertainment was not what God had in mind for me that morning.  As the bus paused at one of the bus stops, a man caught my eye.  I'm not sure what made me take notice of this particular man as opposed to all the others, maybe it was his haggard appearance or his thick, full gray beard.  Whatever it was, I was shaken from my personal reverie to pay attention to what this man was doing.  He had hurried over the side of the bus station and was bending down toward the ground.  There, in the dirt, was a discarded rice packet, presumably the unwanted leftovers from someone's breakfast.  This man was bending down to eat it.  Before I even had time to reach into my purse for my wallet to get some money to give this man, the bus pulled away.  That memory, however, has been burned in my memory ever since.

Now, every morning when I take the bus, I look for that man.  I have seen him maybe once or twice more walking along that same stretch of road.  My heart longs to find that man, to feed his hunger and tell him that there is a God who loves him and who has not forgotten him.  I don't know if this will ever happen, but I pray that someone will tell him.

As I look around this country, I see the immense needs of the people.  It is easy to get overwhelmed by how great the need really is.  I look at what I am doing and I think, "How am I making a difference here?  I am just teaching English."  I know that the children at the preschool are needy - they come from the fishing communities (AKA slums) along the coast.  Most of these "homes" are just corrugated steel lean-tos.  I've also noticed that when we have birthday parties at the nursery for the children that some of the children pack away their cake or candy bars to take home because they may not get another meal that day.  

Lately, my question to myself has been, "How can I communicate the love of Christ without being His mouth?"  Most of the children I work with are 3 and 4 years old and their English level is LOW, so telling them that God loves them isn't very effective.  But I am a part of the BODY of Christ, not just the mouth.  So, I do what I can by my actions to show these children that I care for them and love them because that's what Christ has commanded me to do.  It has taken my words being taken from me (because I can't speak Sinhala) to focus my attention on being the hands and feet and other parts of the body for Christ.

"For the body does not consist of one member but of many.  If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear should say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing?  If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?  But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.  If all were a single member, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many parts, yet one body."  1 Corinthians 12:14-20

Secrets, Secrets are no fun

Let's face it, we all have secrets: things we're afraid to tell others because what we're hiding just might make them change their opinion of us.  I'm not talking about the things that you don't tell your acquaintances or someone you just met, but the deeper things that you keep hidden from your parents, your best friend, maybe even your spouse.

I've never been the most outgoing person.  Loud noises scare me, and being around large groups of people tends to push me further inside myself.  Don't get me wrong, I'm no cave-dwelling hermit!  However, I tend to be one who has a smaller group of very close friends and not necessarily Ms. Popularity.  Therefore, I really take to heart the friends that I do have.

Where I am going with all of this???  China.  When you pack up your whole life and move halfway around the world, you don't exactly get to take your friends with you.  And you don't exactly have the good fortune of having friends waiting for you there.  So, when I met John & Lindsey at the first adult English Corner in our city during my first month or so in China, I was excited to know that there were some other young foreigners in my city.  We got to know each other better and became more than friends, really.  We became a family.  We even joked that the people in our city probably thought that John had 2 wives because we pretty much went everywhere together, the three of us.  We celebrated holidays together, watched movies together, shared some pretty awful/embarrassing moments together, and shared our hearts for the people of our city.  That first year together in China created an inseparable bond between us - one that endures today.

However, God had other plans for us in our second year.  This isn't something that we talk about much.  Not me.  Not them.  Not our other friends in the city either.  It is just so emotional and sad and still filled with so many questions.  John & Lindsey ran into difficulties when they tried to switch jobs from the private school they were working at to the university where I was working.  They tried everything imaginable.  I prayed everything imaginable.  I walked the campus praying the Word of God over their situation, I prayed in my apartment alone, I prayed together with them, I prayed and prayed and prayed because that was all that I could do.  I never lost hope that God would come through and make it okay and neither did they.  And then, on Oct. 11, I helped them pack their things into the taxi and had to watch them drive away with me left standing there in front of our apartment building.  It still makes me cry today remembering that day.  I didn't know when or if I would ever see them again on this side of heaven.

Then came the doubts - Why didn't God answer our prayers?  Did I not pray hard enough?  Did I not have enough faith?  Do you not love me, Lord?  What about me?  John and Lindsey have each other, they will be fine, but I am all alone.  This is the first time that I had ever experienced doubts like this.  It shook me to my core, and my faith became weaker and weaker.  I didn't realize what was happening or even what I was doing.  I just noticed that my quiet times weren't as meaningful as they had been before, I wasn't hearing from God the way I had before, my times of prayer weren't like they were before, I wasn't as passionate about being in China and doing what God had called me to do there as before.

As a result of losing my 2 best friends in China I began to pull away from everyone and everything.  I was scared to let someone else into my heart and my life.  I put up walls and closed myself off to everyone - students, friends, family, my parents.  I didn't want to get hurt again and the easiest way to do that was to simply isolate myself.  If no one was close to me, then it wouldn't matter to me if they came and went in and out of my life.  I became cold and dispassionate on the outside, but on the inside I was barely holding it together.  My heart was hemorrhaging.

Almost 1 year later I realized that I was backsliding.  I was desperate to turn things around, so I decided to do a Bible study on prayer.  I started to feel a little "better" at certain times when I was praying, but where I had once been "on fire" I was now just kind of a "dull flame" or a "flicker".  Slowly, gradually, it began to dawn on me that I was not depending on God, but was instead depending on myself.

Then came another set back: JL was denied his visa to the US to meet my family and to get married...twice.  Again the doubts came.  I continued to battle against depending on myself and instead relying on God.  I knew that He wasn't keeping us from getting married, but I couldn't understand why He didn't want me to have the wedding that I had been dreaming of my whole life.  I wondered, "After all I've given up for you Lord, after all I've sacrificed, can't You just let me have this ONE thing?  Is it too much to ask that I could get ONE thing that I want?"  Apparently the answer was yes.  Quite honestly, I began to resent God.  How can He be soooo good and soooo loving and yet not give me the only thing that I really wanted in my whole life?  Was it because of sin in my past?

Last month, in preparation for an upcoming conference, we got some materials that needed to be translated.  It was called the Prayer for Over-Comers.  It asked the person to identify a lie that they were currently believing and to name it, then nail it to cross, repent of believing the lie, and to replace the lie with a truth.  I began to think about what my lie was.  Then, it dawned on me - I was believing that God no longer loved me because He didn't give me the things that I wanted.  Consequently, I also questioned God's power to work in my life.  The truth is that God loves me unconditionally (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8, Rom. 8:16-17, 1 John 3:1).  The truth is that NOTHING can separate me from the love of God (Rom. 8:38-39).  The truth is that God loves me too much to give me lesser things (Matt. 7:11, Jas. 1:17).  That's my secret - that this woman of God has questioned His love for her and His power as the All Sovereign God of the Universe.  In difficult times like this, I can only stand on the promises of God because they are the real truth.  I have to trust that God knows what is best (Isa. 55:8-9, Rom. 11:33-34).

Do not get me wrong!  By no means do I suddenly have it all together.  God is continuing to speak to me and reveal and unravel the depths of my heart and faith that this lie has infected.  This will be a slow recovery - there's a lot to heal and work through.  But, we ALL have secrets, so maybe by sharing mine you can face yours.