Feet in Two Worlds

So here we are in an unreal place - the Shangri La Resort in Cebu. We're here because some visitors (staff and supporters of the work my husband does) are treating us to two nights here.

(photo taken from Shangri La Cebu website)

Now, don't get me wrong because I am very thankful to be here, I just feel the need to reflect on my experiences this past week and how the disparity between two worlds makes me feel.

It's as if the other world, the world known by the poor, is the reality. And this, here, is just contrived and made up to anesthetize one's self to the true reality that exists just beyond this estate.*

In the past week,

• I went with two women to the hospital for a check up to have IUDs removed. One woman was found to have extremely high blood pressure. We were sent to the ER and I was able to help with some meds to try to get her BP down (not effective). The woman eventually signed out of the hospital against medical advice with dangerously high blood pressure because she has no money for the recommended admission and lab tests. I was unable to convince her to check in at a less expensive hospital where we could assist in the cost. She said she felt fine. We prayed together and I took her home.

• I walked around a slum area alone, a little lost when I didn't have a way to meet up with friends I had meant to connect with. Friends meet in this community several times a week to get to know people there and disciple new believers. I've been joining lately and have been able to help with some medical needs of some of the women there. I felt insecure and embarrassed as I walked around and asked for directions. People stared and smiled and said something like, "Look! There's an Americana." I was concerned about the mud created from the last rain getting on my jeans. I almost lost my rubber flip flop to the mud that attempted to swallow it. I eventually found someone I knew and she took me to a shack of a home where the woman with high B/P lived, who I had taken to the hospital the day before. We visited for a while and we prayed together for healing. Then I went home feeling pleased with myself for not giving up and trying to find my way for the first time by myself in an unfamiliar place and was happy it at least resulted in something small.

• I visited a woman who lives near some fish ponds in a place that regularly gets flooded during rainy season. I got to give my first depo shot as a certified professional midwife. She told me I could post the following photo (It felt significant that I was administering family planning for the first time as an autonomous midwife). To get there, we walked on raised bamboo paths that were built over muddy, stagnant, garbage-filled water. I walked carefully for fear that I'd fall in.

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

• I joined in a bible study with new believers who live in either a neighborhood like the photos below or on the street. We read together from Psalm 107 and asked them to share what part they could relate to. Two women in particular said they could relate to this: "Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle. They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress." I heard stories how these women and their children hadn't eaten all day and how they cried out to God and suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, they had food. One of the women shared how her 9-month-old son had become extremely ill. His eyes were rolling in the back of his head, he wouldn't eat, and was vomiting. She prayed. A friend of mine from our church community happened to be in the area at an unusual time and suddenly ran into this woman and her child. They were able to admit the child at the public hospital where he received treatment for potassium deficiency. For this woman, this was a clear answer to her prayer for help. Thank you, Jesus!

• 
  

• I toured the public hospital with 30 American teenaged volunteers from Texas. I walked around the hospital feeling disgusted like I sometimes do when I walk through other parts of the city that feel spiritually oppressive and dark. We spent much time in the pediatric ward, praying for families and children. I met a young man in a stairwell whose girlfriend just lost their baby at only 6 months gestation. I saw an old woman in the ER on whom the staff was performing CPR and nobody seemed to make the effort to cover her body clothed only in undergarments. There was a crowd that gathered to watch and I couldn't bear to take in the show or know what may eventually happen. The whole scene just felt so undignified. I felt totally unprepared to walk around and minister to people so I just translated for the volunteers. I struggled with a strong desire to leave as soon as possible and not think about this place.

• On my last night shift I assisted the delivery of a growth-restricted baby who weighed only 2.1 kg (4 lbs, 10 oz) and watched his young parents look utterly hopeless because they only had 200 pesos and they were going to need money to pay for meds/supplies/care for their baby. I knew they already had a special needs child who was also growth-restricted in the womb. I noticed during delivery that the corners of the mom's mouth were bleeding possibly due to vitamin B and/or vitamin C deficiency while she had to forcefully and quickly push her baby out because his heart slowed down to 50 as his cord was trapped between his head and the mother's pelvis and then was born completely white and floppy with a heart rate of only 70 (normal is 120-160) and us resuscitating him with an ambu bag. He survived and we stayed up all night monitoring him.

So these are some of the places and events that filled my week and now I'm here at the Shangri La and it feels like a fantasy land - so not real! Life just goes on satisfying one's need for pleasure, perhaps to pacify the need for something greater, while the reality for the poor carries on with no end in sight. I recognize my own feelings of inadequacy and selfishness. I can not be satisfied any longer with such pleasures in excess - for in the darkness of the night lately I wake and sense the struggles of the poor and suffering and I can do nothing but carry their burdens to the Father and pray for wisdom regarding my role in it all.

*I am not judging those who take time to rest in a beautiful place, as we often do. I am speaking against the portion of the world that seems to carry on with a fantasy life oblivious to the plight of the poor, which is also a life I have tasted.

To Really Live...

Some days I feel I am wasting precious time. Something tells me it's because I am. I can get so wrapped up in "my life" that being challenged to go out of my way for another offends me. Sure it is easy to serve the people I really like - anyone can do that - but to serve those not in my immediate circle and those who are not easy to love? Oh the wretchedness of self! As a Christian I have erroneously believed that I'd reached this place of selflessness and once there, I was changed forever - immune to the onslaughts of self. Oh how wrong this is.

How quickly I forget my desperate need for Christ - his resurrection power, his Spirit - and how essential staying tapped into it is, to being willing to lay down my life. Clearly, left to my own devices, I end up living according to the default modus operandis. My default m.o. is that of self. Self-centered, self-focused, straight up selfishness. Sometimes I put a convincing shiny gloss over it and try to call it something else but deep down I know what it really is.

I can not passively expect transformation to selflessness. The only way to combat selfishness is to actively choose daily to live according to a different force. The power of the Spirit. Only then can I follow Jesus' example and live like he did, literally pouring out his life for the broken, the hurting, the prisoners, the exploited - those in bondage to sin and culture and generational curses and poverty.

The same power that raised Christ from the dead supposedly lives in me. Do I really believe this? Sadly, my life doesn't always make that fact clear. It's not enough to know it's there. I have to choose daily to access it and live according to it. Only then will I be able to see and hear the words and leading of the One who calls me beloved. Only then will I have the courage and selflessness to act.

Jesus said,

"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it."

I've never liked this verse. It's too challenging. Too difficult to understand (is it?). Surely it must not mean what it sounds like it means. I have rationalized and diluted its meaning for years. I all too often tend to give and serve when it's convenient. I give out of my abundance and then pat myself on the back when I do. Blech!

But today, what I am hearing is that I must not spend my energy on protecting this life of mine, to build it up, to improve it, to save it - strictly for the comfort of it. No. I must give it away. Lay it down. For me this begins with laying down my to-do list, my schedule, what I guard and regard as "my time." It also means living with less and giving away more.

Everywhere I look it's the same message.

"Those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples" Luke 14: 33

"If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interest of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant..." Philippians 2:1-7

"Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did." 1 John 2:6

"This how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. If any one of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." 1 John 3:16-18

I have believed for some time that I should wait until these things come naturally - until I am compelled by my compassion to act. And at times I do. I am learning that this doesn't always just happen and when it does, it not often enough. I have to decide it and takes steps toward it and structure my life in a way that is conducive to laying it down.

[By the way, I am not talking about working to earn my salvation. For I "have been saved by grace, through faith - and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9) I know this well for it was heavily stamped into my mind as a child when I memorized this verse at church in Awana. Frankly, the emphasis on this verse freed me from feeling guilty about my life not looking any different after I "got saved." I was taught that if any "works" were of the wrong motivation, they would just be "filthy rags" before the Lord (from Isaiah 64: 6). This was a good thing to learn. Of course we can not earn God's love or our salvation but for some reason something I heard made me think it didn't matter that much about how I lived, as long as I really knew I was saved. I had heard somewhere that if I doubted my salvation, it meant I wasn't really saved and so I did my best to feel sure. I must have "prayed the sinner's prayer" numerous times in those early years. Besides the basic issues of moral behavior (no swearing, no drinking, no sex before marriage), the only imperative I knew about after I received Jesus and for many years afterward, was evangelism. You as a Christian must do this - regardless of how loving or unloving you go about it. (After trying unsuccessfully to convert my friends and get them to pray the sinners prayer in junior high, I promptly gave up and opted for being cool, which at the time, was easier for me to attain. I have felt a tremendous amount of guilt over the years for never having gotten anyone "saved." What a failure. For most of my youth I just went along living my nominal Christian life like my friends did and sadly like I saw other Christians doing. After all, I'm saved aren't I? So what's wrong with having a little fun?) But what about the very next verse in Ephesians? Why didn't we memorize this as well as it is clearly an integral and connected part of this passage? "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."!!! Ephesians 2:10]

What about that?? Are we just wooden pieces that get moved around by God the Grand Chess Player as one of his pawns? I don't believe so. He has given us the ability to choose and decide. We have our will after all. And there are always consequences to our decisions - both positive and negative - that affect us, the people around us, and the world in general.

Is it possible that we might miss out - or more importantly, that others might miss out on experiencing Jesus' life and peace and rescue and healing if we don't act? Although I hate to admit it, I think so.

So am I to go around feverishly trying to help all the broken and hurting people around me? Impossible! I could spend every waking hour of every day for the rest of my life and still not reach them all. So how do I know who to go to in the name of Jesus? Who to encourage, who to pray for, who to share food with, who to help with their medical bills when everywhere I go there are needy people. The main point though, even if I don't get it right all the time, is to do something. The worst thing is to not do anything, which is just so tempting!!!

That is why I must DAILY commune with God's Spirit. So that I can see and hear and act according to that. And also so that I can act out of his power, his love, his rest, and not out of my own strength and striving, which will just end me up jaded, bitter and burnt out. Jesus did what he saw the Father doing. So we also must. And in order to see and hear, we must be looking and listening. We must be willing to risk and practice. And in order to live from his strength and power, we must draw close to him, learning to rest in him daily. I think this is where I continually get off-track. How many times do I have to be reminded of the same thing until I get it!? The key is to not feel condemned and give up but to accept God's mercy and take comfort from the life of amazingly effective ministers like Paul who, in expressing his frustration with the power of the sin nature in his own life said, "What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" And to that he says in the very next verse, "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 7:24-25)

I regularly get wrapped up and distracted by my own needs and desires that I stop looking and listening. And I forget that I need God's strength and so I live out of my own and end up weary. And I have learned not to do something out of obligation or guilt as something done without love is useless. But when I give up all together, this is when I waste precious time. Time that could be used to be Christ incarnate to a hurting, starving, suffering, empty, evil world. How else will the world know God? It's not enough that I go to church on Sunday. It's not enough that my husband works for a Christian organization that seeks justice on behalf of the poor. It's not enough that we live here in the Philippines if I am just going to pass over the poor as I go about my to do list. I'm sick of feeling afraid and making up a million excuses as to why I can't stop and take time to be Jesus to someone in need when it wasn't on my schedule!

God sent Jesus so that humans could experience God in human form. When Jesus was resurrected into heaven he left his work for his followers to do. He sent the Holy Spirit to empower this work. As Christians, we are not only followers, we are his body. As Christ was God made flesh, we are Christ made flesh. We are his hands, his feet, his life, his representatives. The bible and the accounts of Jesus' life are FULL of examples of walking with, living among, and seeking out the poor. Clearly this is important to him.

I think one of the biggest disservices we can do as Christians for other Christians and to the rest of the world is to not live as Jesus lived, thereby giving others a poor example of who Christ really is. Over the years we have met other Christians who are risking their very lives and even the lives of their children to follow Jesus. We have friends who live part of the year in the jungles of Burma, serving displaced people who live daily under the threat of attack by the Burma army. And our other friends who just picked up their family with two young children and moved to a country in central Asia. And not that you have to pick up and move to be faithful to what Jesus is calling you to. Of course there are many, many others we know who are making risks and faithfully and obediently serving Jesus. Their examples speak volumes to us.

Many faithful people in our community here in Cebu (led by the example of Jackie Pullinger) are teaching us, by their example (of course they're not perfect) what it means to be a follower of Jesus as they regularly lay down their lives to serve the poor. These are not well-educated people with theological training. They are people who rely on the the Holy Spirit to reveal truth to them through the bible and then live according to what they learn. Simple as that.

I am seeing faith lived out in a way that looks very close to what I read about in the first five books of the New Testament. It is this example that challenges and spurs me on to grow and change and live according to what my gut tells me - that there is more to this life of faith! It is an example like those we've witnessed that Andrey and I want to be to our children. This is the legacy we desire to pass on. Not safety, not security, not comfort, not mediocrity, not loving only when it's convenient, not giving only when we have enough for ourselves...

Gracious Lord I cry out to you for mercy. For time is short and I don't want to waste any more of it. You have touched and healed my life. You have rescued and saved me. How could I ever repay you? You deserve nothing less than my life laid down and for me to live out that which you have prepared in advance for me. You say we are to love you. That is the greatest commandment. You also say that if we love you, we are to feed your sheep and love our neighbor as our self. Help me Lord! For it's only in YOU that this is possible.

Isaiah 58:6-12 (The Message)

"This is the kind of fast day I'm after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.
What I'm interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
You'll call out for help and I'll say, 'Here I am.'

"If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims,
quit gossiping about other people's sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
firm muscles, strong bones.
You'll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You'll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again."