Love Greater than Peanut Butter

Coming home from Nassau always feels a bit dizzying...and this time is no exception.  I'm also returning from my first-ever-soon-to-be-repeated trip to Haiti, which adds another layer of experience to debrief.

There really aren't words to describe the emotions of tonight.  Horror at some of the things I have just seen.  Immense joy as I think about the kids in Nassau and how blessed I am to call them friends.  Tremendous pride in my students, who wisely and bravely navigate cross-cultural relationships to share the love of Christ in the face of injustice.  My heart is swelling.  I am so thankful.

There were many highlights over the past ten days:

Playing with kids at the orphanages in Haiti and meeting the people who care for them.

Hiking up a hill to a little makeshift church where nearly 100 people have come to know Jesus since the earthquake, and hearing the pastor say that the Voodoo temples in the area have mostly disappeared.

Greeting my little friends in Nassau and hearing them read their nursery rhymes or tell me about school.

Watching my student, Will, fulfill the dream of his year-long senior project to plant a vegetable garden at Carmichael Church that will feed hungry kids in the neighborhood.

Dancing and giggling into the night with a group of middle school girls and women my own age at the church {{pure joy!}}. 

Spending a lazy Saturday playing with the neighborhood kids.

Taking peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and popsicles to our friends at Anna's house.

 

Tonight, I settle back into the old rhythms.  Take Aiden molasses cookies and feel the spring breeze on my back as I ride.  Get a manicure to remove the grime of the past ten days from under my fingernails.  Order takeout.  Cozy up on my plush sofa and call my parents.

But as I slide easily into my comfy life with all its little luxuries, the children I met in Haiti will still have to climb a half mile or more up hill with the day's water.  And as Will wisely remarked today, our friend Ronell is still sitting on the same dank stoop in the hot Bahamian sun.  The precious kids I love still don't have a clean spot to lay their heads.

And the same old question haunts me:  

what must change in my life to make a difference in theirs? 

It is one thing to travel to these places and offer love, encouragement, a PB&J.  But it's another to effect lasting change.  I want to do that.  To make a difference that counts.  And as I lie between my soft, organic cotton sheets writing this, I confess that change--real change--feels far off. How can it be near when I'm so comfy-cozy-not-lacking-anything?  These are the questions with which I wrestle, without exception, each time I return from the little Haitian slum on Carmichael Road.

Sister Mona at the Good Shepherd Orphanage in Carfour, Haiti says that presence is the most important thing we can give.  "When you come with your smiles and play with our children," the articulate orphanage director quips, "we know that we are no longer forsaken." 

And so it is with my Jesus, who had dirt under his fingernails.  He stopped to spend time with the down-and-out, the brokenhearted, and the outcast.  He invited children to come sit on his lap.  He offered some loaves and fish.  Even he, our Good Teacher and the Healer of the whole world did not solve the problems of poverty and hunger and injustice in a day.  He just moved on into the neighborhood (John 1:14) and visited a while. 

They know Him best, these little friends of mine with not much in their tummies.  And spending time with them, I come to know Him better, too.

The God Who Stoops Low

On Wednesday I was writing discussion questions for our area WHY Groups on the Beatitudes.  I hoped to draw the distinction between our world's view of success and what Jesus says about what it means to be blessed.  In a way only Jesus can, he radically redefines our ideas of blessedness: if you are poor, if you mourn, if you are meek, hungry, merciful, pure in heart, peacemaking, or persecuted--you will be blessed (Matthew 5:3-10).

Lutheran pastor/teacher Brian Stoffregen's comments are helpful in understanding the Greek word for "blessed," makarios:

"The old Rabbi said, "In olden days there were men who saw the face of God."
"Why don't they any more?" a young student asked.
"Because, nowadays no one stoops so low," he replied.

"Who wants to be a lowly person? Who wants to be stooped down? Most of us spend a good part of our lives trying to pull ourselves up. We want to walk tall in society. But, according to this rabbi, it is the lowly – those stooped low – who see the face of God. According to Jesus in the Beatitudes, it is the lowly – those stooped low – who are blessed by God. This runs counter to the normal uses of that word for blessed, makarios."

Later that afternoon, I went to WestConn to hear a speaker from a New Haven-based NGO called Love146 that combats the child sex slave trade.  The organization is closely linked to IJM, but its focus is more narrow.

Love146 COO Jim Ehrmen expertly communicated the problem to an audience for whom the issue was relatively new.  "The market value of a slave in 1850 was $40,000 with inflation," he said.  "And pardon my crassness, but when you have a machine at that value, you take care of it."  Then he shared the shocking reality; a child sex slave in today's economy is worth roughly $90.  And so millions of children around the world are being trafficked and used as commodities that may be discarded when they are no longer useful to their owners.

"You wanna know what's fueling sex trafficking right now," Jim asked the crowd.  "Children who don't have a rudder, who don't have a home, who don't have a sense of well-being."  

In the face of such devastating information, I'm thankful that we serve a God who has stooped low for us, making himself nothing (Philippians 2) and taking on the suffering of the world.

I continue to wrestle with this question of how I am to join Him in this stooping low, this identifying with the suffering of the poor, the mourning, the hungry, the persecuted.  

This morning, I'm departing for Haiti--a part of the world that some have called "Fourth World," simply because the living conditions there are so far beyond anything else in the underdeveloped world (i.e. Third World).  I am thankful for this opportunity to meet those who have seen the face of God.  May we be a people who take hold of the same blessing.

Our Rescuer

Tonight is Maundy Thursday, when we remember the events of the night Jesus was betrayed into the hands of the crowds.  (The chief priests and elders were cowards and would not come for him themselves.)

As I thought today about the coming Easter weekend, I found myself craving liturgy and solemn observance--and even anonymity.  {When you work at a church, sometimes you long to be an anonymous worshiper.} And so I went to a Maundy Thursday service tonight at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Newtown, where the pastor is a Gordon-Conwell graduate and the former pastor of my close friends on the North Shore.

It is a solemn night, and all the collects are all solemn.  We recite the confession together, declaring: "we have sinned in thought, word, and deed, and we cannot free ourselves from our sinful condition." And I am weeping already, kneeling on the pew kneelers and remembering that I need rescuing.

We take communion and remember that Jesus prepared this meal for his disciples so that they would have assurance of his grace and his presence with them.  Even after his crucifixion.  Even after everything had changed.

But this meal is not just any meal--it is inextricably linked to the Passover, which is taking place this very week.

Fittingly, I talked with students this past Sunday about Moses and the first Passover.

{{I outline the curriculum and even write the material for our 9:00 a.m. small groups, but this timing had not been intentional--at least not on my part.}}

As I prepared last week to speak to students about Moses and the burning bush (before they split up to discuss the story in their groups), the verses that stood out to me were Exodus 3:7-8:

The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.  So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

"Can't you just imagine it?" I asked my sophomore girls after we had split up from the larger group.  "God looks down on you and on me, and He says, I have indeed seen the misery of my people...I am concerned about their suffering.  So I have come down to rescue them! and He sends Jesus.  Our Rescuer.

Paul puts it this way in Titus 3:3-5:

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.  But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.

Like the Israelites, we too have been enslaved.  Our passions and pleasures have held us captive to sin.  Our Enemy has kept us in bondage.  But God has indeed seen our misery, has been concerned about our suffering.  And He himself has come down to rescue us.

In the first Passover meal, God rescued His people from the hand of their oppressors.  In this Passover, He has rescued us from ours. 

 

 

{{the Word became flesh}}

Already a week into Advent, and I am just now posting this year's daily Scriptures.  {I put up my tree late this year, too--such is the life of a busy student/career girl!}  Anyway, the readings are embedded below if you want to follow along!

We've been doing a study on Advent for our Sunday morning youth small groups at Walnut Hill, and this morning we talked about the Incarnation and what it means for us that "the Word became flesh..." (John 1:14). 

As I was developing the material the past couple of weeks, there were several practical applications that struck me: 1.) Jesus is fully God, so he deserves our worship, 2.) Jesus inhabited a body, so God cares what we do with our bodies, 3.) Jesus "moved into the neighborhood," (as Eugene Peterson has paraphrased John 1:14 in the Message), so it matters how we inhabit the places we live.  Wow--it was a lot to cover in one morning!

But before we launched the small groups, I shared with students for a few minutes about why Jesus had to come at all.  I tried to connect for them the two dimensions of God's Word--written (the Bible) and living/Incarnate (Jesus!).  God's written Word is manifest in the Person of Jesus Christ who comes to fulfill the Law and Prophets (Matthew 5:17) and to accomplish what the law could not do (Romans 8:3).

Fittingly, one of tonight's Advent Scriptures is Psalm 115.  Last year, I blogged about a song called "One Winter's Night," that has truly become my favorite-of-all-time Christmas carol.  There is a line in the bridge that confused me a bit when I first discovered the tune:

the gods we trusted and became

will find no solace here

The gods we trusted and became?  This was an odd concept to me.  But that same week, I read Psalm 115 and it all made sense:

But their idols are silver and gold,

made by the hands of men.

They have mouths but cannot speak,

eyes, but they cannot see...

Those who make them will be like them,

and so will all who trust in them.

(vv. 4-5, 8)

The point is, we become what we worship.  Since last Christmas, I've noticed that this theme of becoming like our idols is repeated often in Scripture, especially in the Psalms and in Isaiah.  And in my Old Testament class at Gordon-Conwell this fall, Dr. Carol Kaminski has lectured on this concept a good deal. 

At the first of our three class meetings of the semester, Dr. Kaminski said, "We have to learn to listen to the voice of God in our lives, otherwise we treat Him like some dumb idol." 

For this YHWH God has always been a speaking God.  His Word went forth as He created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1-2). And when gave Moses the Law at Mount Sinai.  And through the prophets when the people were so steeped in idolatry that they would not listen and repent.  

And finally, when He could stand it no longer, God spoke through the Word Incarnate, Jesus, "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15).   

{The Word became flesh!}

May you hear Him speak this Christmas.

Now that is God shouting. You can't mistake it. Christ is God, and you see every attribute of God manifest in him. His judgment, his justice, his love, his wisdom, his power, his omniscience. It's all there in person as we see Him walk through the world, working his work, living his life. The fullness of God may be seen as it was never seen before in Jesus Christ.

John MacArthur 

Advent Readings 2012

farewell to a saint, sister, and friend

Summer Trips have just ended, and I still need to write and recap about Mississippi and Portland.  But tonight my heart is back in Nassau.  Our beautiful Bahamian sister and heroine of the faith, Ms. Moxey, has gone to be with Jesus.

It is a curious kind of sadness, loosing a saint in this life.  Beautiful because she is not sad!  She is, as my friend Tim reminded me, running with Jesus, just like she said she would.  And heart-wrenching because I won't have the great honor introducing my students to her again this side of heaven, or of sitting and holding her frail hand while she reads aloud the hundredth Psalm from her well-worn Bible for the hundredth time.

It's here at the barn, in the still of the night with only crickets chirping and horses munching the last of their dinner, that I got Tim's text.  I bury my head in Aiden's big, soft shoulder and cry the tears that have been stored up for this day since I first met Ms. Moxey two years ago.  Aiden is good company for teary-eyed moments--he reaches around to rest his head on my shoulder and lets out a deep sigh.  I'm not one of those animal-people who think that my horse has a soul and feels compassion; but I think of Romans 8:19-22, that the creation groans and waits for the world to be rescued from its brokenness.  My big thoroughbred is sighing with the rest of creation tonight {and every night}.  It reminds me that as I cry, I'm not the only one who senses deep down that things are not as they should be.

Ms. Moxey knew it, too.  Oh, how she knew it!  And her whole life was a revealing of the Kingdom that is both now and coming.  You could feel it so powerfully in her tiny little bedroom, as she talked about the goodness of God and the fierceness of His love.  Ms. Moxey taught us how to long for heaven, because heaven was so near when you were in her presence.

She also taught us how to live with boldness in the wait for heaven.  The Angel of Courage, I called her--so named for the Willow Tree Angel with her hands raised in triumph above her head, a posture Ms. Moxey often took to express her joy.  When I feel anxious or fretful, I think of Ms. Moxey, facing the hardships of her difficult life with her face set upon the God who promised good to her, unafraid of what horrors AIDS might bring her.

She taught us to trade bitterness for joy.  Never in my life have I known someone with more reason to live out of resentment, and yet my students will tell you--she was the most joyful person any of us has ever met!  It wasn't a put on, phoney-Christian kind of joy, either, but the kind that let you know she had most certainly been with Jesus.

And she is with him now.  Face to face at last.  Her body, once ravaged by AIDS, now restored to the perfection God intended in the Garden.  Her spirit, more alive than ever {though it's difficult to imagine how anyone could be more alive than Ms. Moxey!}, and her face, radiating the Father's glory in even greater brilliance than it did while she graced this earth.

My students have learned Ms. Moxey's lessons well.  Today, as one of my girls and I were--oddly enough--working on a little project for Pastor Joseph in Nassau, she said to me, "it just doesn't really matter what happens in my life, whether I get married or where I live.  That's nothing compared with the things I know God has for me to do."  Another called me after we heard the news tonight and said, "Chelsea, I can't even cry or be sad!  I'm just so full of joy that she is with Jesus, finally."  And so Ms. Moxey's legacy of joy in all circumstances lives on.

On my last visit to see her, it certainly seemed that it wouldn't be long.  A stroke had further wrecked her body this year, and she was less herself at times because of the heavy medication she hated taking. As I read to her from Revelation 21, tears threatened to choke the words:

 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

(Revelation 21:3-5)

As I read, she seemed to so especially close to Jesus, so ready to be Home!  

And tonight, as I think about this brave woman who has taught me so much about the heart of God, I too am longing for Home.

Nassau 2012: All the sad things are coming untrue

On my much needed day off yesterday, I took some time to think and write and debrief.  I know from past years that this process often takes weeks, but I'm off to Portland with another team on Sunday--so I'm praying God will give me favor in decompressing everything quickly.

I had the opportunity to speak to the whole Mission Discovery group (our students and three other groups from around the country) on Thursday night during our evening service.  I always like to claim Thursday night because for most of the teams, the week is over at that point, and students have just said their heart-wrenching goodbyes.  {{of course, our team worked an extra day this year, so my own kids weren't quite in debriefing mode yet.}}  I love to talk to everyone at camp about the Kingdom that has already been initiated but that is not yet here in fullness.  I love to tell them that when they feel knocked backward by the need they see in Nassau, they need not lose heart!

For part one of this year's talk, I borrowed from a sermon I heard recently by Mike Erre, my friend Emme's pastor in California.  It's called "The Cross-Shaped World," and I've listened to it six times over the past couple of weeks--it is so beautiful!!  {Listen here.}  I explained that on the cross, Jesus turned a Roman torture symbol into the means by which we are saved.  Paul writes: "Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross" (Colossians 2:15).  I told the students that so often, we mistake the gospel for only the thing we teach to unbelievers--when really it's the hope we have for every part of life!  But, I shared with them that the cross isn't the end of the story.  If it were, we'd all be pretty hopeless.  But there is a Day that's coming when our great Savior will ride in on his white horse and save the day (Revelation 19)!  He will make everything new (Revelation 21).  We celebrated this reality with an Ecumenical (there was another non-denominational church, a Chinese church, and a Methodist church with us) communion service with orange juice and Cheese Nips.  It might have been the most boot-leg communion service ever, but it was beautiful, and God was there.

Here's what I'm wrestling with upon my return:

Sometimes I have a harder time believing in redemption for my students than for those broken Haitian kids.  Our lives are so cluttered, here in the States where we play it so safe.  The Haitian kids with their grubby hands and bruised, bare feet have treasures that my own kids do not.  They are rich by comparison--they see fully their own need, and they know what it is to have that need met by Grace.

I hope that as my students process what they have seen, they will not be the same.  But I know it's a bold hope because I see the reality in my own life.  Ms. Moxey and Anna's kids and Pastor and Madam Joseph keep on challenging me.  My heart is filled, I pray for them, seek ways to better their lives, wait for next year, repeat.  But in the meantime, I still shop at the same stores, still eat the same rich food, still prioritize travel and leisure, still clutter up my life.  {{What would it look like to let go of some of that?}}

And I feel hopeless for my students because if their thick-headed teacher doesn't even get it, how will they, these walking paradoxes who are all joy and selflessness one moment and all sass the next?  They are mirrors--the same stuff that's in them is in me too, only bigger and worse because I'm really old enough to know better.

"All the sad things are coming untrue," Tolkien writes.  And I have to remind myself: that goes for the Haitian kids and their empty tummies, but also for my students in the hurt they face stateside.

It's easy to look at the Haitian kids and see that they are oppressed, by a government and a people that does not want them, by the forces of poverty that keep them bound.

{{But my students and I--we are shackled up with all this stuff, with our safety and our comfort.}} 

Those Haitian kids, in the immensity of their need, are closer to that Day that we are.  In their lacking, they can taste the abundance that is to come.  It feels far off to me, here in the States.  But in that little Haitian slum where God is so near, I can almost taste it too.

There's a land where our shackles turn to diamonds;

When we trade in our rags for a royal crown.

In that place our oppressors hold no power,

And the doors of the King are thrown wide!

Caedmon's Call, "Mother India"