Where I fit in...

I just finished watching a program in which two young missionary men share their travel experiences through third world countries. In this episode they visited Rwanda. They were given tours of all the areas where millions were brutally murdered. One young woman, who survived one of the mass killings on church grounds, spoke of how she literally was buried by bodies of those who had been killed or were dying. She and others amazingly escaped the church, but one look in her eyes as she spoke about the experience, showed how real it still was to her. As the two men visited each site, they were shown church rooms full of bones and skulls, dried blood and brain remains on the walls and ceilings, and rooms where militia literally bashed babies’ heads against walls to kill them! My heart sank and I started to weep! I couldn’t even imagine my little nephew being brutally murdered like that! It’s hard to even take in just 30 minutes of hearing the stories of the genocide in Rwanda, but I can’t even imagine the horrors these people endured… and the world turned its eyes for 100 days…what injustice!!

            As I have been thinking, praying, and preparing for my trip to Haiti, I have questioned and wondered why? Why was I born in the United States, in a family where I was taken care of, fed, and always had what I needed? Should I feel guilty because of this? Growing up I remember being reprimanded for enjoying things that I did. “There are many kids and children who don’t have what you have,” people would say as if it was a sin to be happy to live in a country with such resources and freedom. So instead of enjoying the things God had blessed me with, I would feel condemned and shamed!  Our God is not a condemning God! He doesn’t want our actions to come from a heart full of shame. He wants me to be moved by compassion and love! It is God’s loving kindness that leads us to repentance, to a turning back to Him, His ways, and His way of seeing the world and other people! He doesn’t want my shame provoked charity! He wants a heart moved by Him that seeks love, compassion, and justice! When I am helping people who are hurting from war and/or poverty I am serving as an advocate for Jesus; I am being the hands and feet of God’s justice. Bono said it well: “This is not about charity in the end, is it? It’s about justice… I just want to repeat that: This is not about charity, it’s about justice.” I want to see those that I am serving as human beings, created in the image of God, not another number, a charity case to be pitied! I want to know their names and know who they are, their hearts. I want to look at them like they are a brother or sister, like they are my own flesh and blood. Cause in reality… they are!!

These past couple of weeks God has been breaking and breaking (and breaking) my heart. I’m not saying that my heart was never broken or sensitive to those hurting around me but I feel He is taking it to a whole other level. As I write this, Worlds Apart by Jars of Clay is playing… “I pray to love You, take my worlds apart, we need you, I am on my knees, we need you, take my worlds apart, broken on my knees…” God is great at doing that, taking my worlds apart, coming at me from another angle. There are times where I feel like I have had enough! Many times I have felt immobilized, asking myself “What can I even do? I am only one person!” But most of the time, God calms my thinking, and I slow down enough to hear Him. Then the answer comes… and I know why I am here, living in the United States. I not only have the resources to help those in need but I also have had the chance to experience justice! I live in a country where I experience freedom and justice in ways many people only dream about, even despite the imperfections and failures of the government. I have experienced injustice but more than not, I have experienced justice and rights; rights to health and security. What would happen if these rights were taken away? I know that at any second they could be. Yet even if they were taken away, I would still have an overwhelming sense that there was something wrong. In the Gospels, Jesus taught us how to pray. He taught us to pray for Heaven to come to earth, “…thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” There is justice in Heaven, so I pray for justice on earth and ask God to let me be a part of it!