July 16, 2007
Cute Kids?
Little kids are cute, aren’t they? I love my nephews. Luke is
three-and-a-half and Caleb is 7 months. They just are so adorable.
Luke and I like to play silly games under the table, and I love to help
his budding imagination bloom even more. Caleb just smiles at
everything his older brother does - and all you have to do is smile at
him and he smiles right back. They are so cute.
So when I thought about the prospect of serving with the children’s
ministry of Mokattam, a smile came to my face as I thought, “Oh, how
cute! I get to help with the little ones like my nephews.”
Wow was I wrong. Cute kids? I don’t think so…
Now, a kid is cute. Two kids (like my nephews) are cute. Even three
together are cute. Kids in small quantities are fine (although, I will
never birth one of them, so I can’t really even speak to that.) But if
you put close to 1000 kids in a semblance of an auditorium, you will see
what I mean about how they aren’t so cute.
Our Global Urban Trek team was assigned to “help” serve a children’s
revival in Mokattam. Here’s how we “helped.” We stood by the aisles of
the kids, and told them to sit down (or, if you were me, you just said
“no” as many times as you could) in order to pay attention to what was
happening on stage. Whatever that was.
At first, I warmed to the task. I smiled, and told the kids “La-a”
(Arabic for “no”). They obeyed. I was proud of myself.
Until they did it again. And again. And again.
“La-a” didn’t exactly cut it any more. It was as if I was singing a
song (la-a-la-a-la-a) and the kids didn’t know the words. Even worse -
they began singing them back to me in mocking fashion.
This is not going well, I thought to myself.
And then I looked around the room - imagine 1000 kids (ages 2-10)
yelling, screaming, jumping, and doing most anything other than what
they were supposed to be doing.
This is really not going well, I thought to myself.
Now I had to mean business. When kids misbehaved, not only did I say
“la-a,” I gave them a glare as well. It worked - the first time. It
kinda worked the second. By the third time…guess what? Now the kids
learned to glare at me - wow, they are smart. And they are doing it
just like…me. Sigh. They are mocking me again.
This is really, really not going well, I thought to myself.
I pulled rank next - I starting picking up kids and putting them back in
their place. Ha! I’m bigger than you, and this will allow for me to
win in the war against the juvenile delinquents at…a children’s
revival. Oops. Maybe not the time to pick up kids…
So, I sat down and just thought I would let the kids be for a bit and
watch.
Kids started beating each other with their water bottles. Every other
kid had tears running down their face. The little ones didn’t know what
to do because they were so small. The big ones were having fun at first
- until they were victims of the assaults they carried out on others.
The heat of the room was rising and my shirt was now soaked with sweat.
I looked around the room at the nearly one thousand kids, and I saw the
adults desperately trying to keep some semblance of order. What if the
adults weren’t here, I thought to myself. What if they just, like me,
sat and watched the kids go crazy and didn’t intervene? What if they
didn’t say anything to keep the kids from destroying themselves?
What if God did the same thing?
When I’m living in poverty everyday, the consequences of the removal of
God’s goodness - or, perhaps a better way to say it is that it is shoved
out by the bigger kids on the planet - is far clearer. A woman whose
family has left her sick and dying and all she has is her hope in God.
A man who is bright, articulate, and intelligent…but can’t find work
because of his handicap from a horrific accident from recycling.
Neither of these folks have an earthly being to care for them or provide
for them - so they trust in God.
What is amazing to me about these and many other folks’ stories in
Mokattam is that their faith no longer is a religion of self-fulfillment
that is curiously aroused when all other stimuli fail. Their faith in
Jesus is built on the reality of their experience in how He has
delivered them and brought them thus far, and they know He will bring
them home.
Many folks are saddened by these folks’ conditions - and they should be.
It’s wrong. But what amazes me is how in line with the reality of God
these folks in Mokattam are. They believe God can move mountains - the
mountain upon which their church was built, and the mountain of poverty
that Mokattam has experienced was far greater in the past, and God’s
church has been the primary force in moving it.
But the reality of the removal of God’s presence, much like the image of
no adult supervision among a group of one thousand children, is a scary
thought. Hell on earth is when God simply honors the request of those
who say they don’t want him in their lives. Hell after earth…well,
that is just something I don’t want to think about. Like a thousand
times worse than a thousand screaming kids beating the crap out of each
other.
Maybe God is actually merciful in forcibly stopping us from beating each
other senseless.
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Andy @ 9:35 am CT Comments (0) |
July 4, 2007
“Is-Heaven” interupting “Is-hell”
(Warning: Potty humor advisory. If you don’t like potty humor, don’t
read.)
There seems to be one inevitable symptom that plagues most westerners
that travel to the two-thirds world: diarrhea. Every member of our team
has had it, some more than once, some never stopping since they’ve
arrived. Bowel movements are regular conversation at the dinner table,
as we look at the food and wonder in what form it will leave our bodies
the next day.
I learned the Arabic word for diarrhea very quickly: “is-hell” I smiled
as I thought the Arabic version sounded much like the feeling in
English.
But I stopped smiling when I ended up getting is-hell. I was the second
to last on our team to get it, but it was bad when I got it. I braved
through it for the first day, resisting the urge to take Immodium AD
because it simply stops me up and prolongs the bacteria rather than
flushing it out. But day two was worse. At lunch that day, someone
asked simply, “how many times?” I won with six visits to the toilet
before 1 PM that day.
We left lunch (after I visited the bathroom for the perfect seventh
time) and toured what would be a new facility for the handicapped of
Mokattam. It will be beautiful and wonderful - six floors (not a large
footprint of a building) with amenities for the handicapped that will
bring the marginalized of this culture to their proper place of dignity
before Jesus. It was like heaven breaking into a bit of hell.
Except when we visited the construction site, we saw the standing water
with garbage and our host told us that the water had been contaminated
by the garbage that had been stored there in the past. Like the
bacteria in my stomach.
And that thought prompted my contaminated bowels warn me of an immediate
and required toilet visit. We made our way back to our place of
residence, and we were greeted by the gatekeeper and one of my friends
I’ve made in Mokattam.
One of the friends I have made here stopped me at the gate and wanted to
speak English with me. And by now I had to go. Really bad. And while
I wanted to be engage cross-culturally, I thought the consequences of a
prolonged conversation could have far worse ramifications for both him,
myself, anyone within smelling distance, my last clean pair of
underwear, and any remnant of my reputation. So after about 5 minutes,
I said, “I have to go, please - ‘is-hell.’ Please pray for me.”
“Oh, you want me to pray for you? I would love to pray for your
healing.”
“Thank-you - Shokran,” I replied.
“Yes, let us go to pray for healing now.”
Oh no. What have I done? Dear Lord…please help.
The man proceeded to show me into a room and asked me to hold out my
open hands and to receive healing. So I opened my hands and squeezed my
cheeks and quickly prayed for a special dispensation of grace to avoid a
stinky dispensation of something else.
But as he prayed for me, and placed his hand on my stomach, I felt
something move. And I didn’t have to go. At all. For the next 24
hours. And I was healed.
“Wow.” I thought. “I was just healed. That’s never happened before.”
My second thought wasn’t as holy, “If I just got miraculously healed,
why did it get spent on diarrhea? Why not cancer?”
But I came back to the first thought again, and finished the walk home.
The power of heaven just overpowered the “is-hell” that was reigning in
my belly. Not the most glamorous picture, but I think it’s a good
picture of a God who entered a broken and “is-hell” filled world for the
sake of reclaiming the world for what it was meant to be.
The next time I went to the bathroom, everything came out clean. I
flushed, and then I praised the Lord.
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Andy @ 7:09 am CT Comments (0) |
June 30, 2007
Detox & Freedom Riders
OK, I admit it; I’m an addict. I felt compulsions, cravings, and even
felt signs of withdrawal. I grab for it, and it’s not there. I think
about it and I wonder when I will have it next.
I’m in withdrawal…from my mobile web-enabled PDA phone. MWEPDAP, if
you will, if abrevs are indeed sweeping the nat(ion.)
As a spiritual discipline, I left it with the rest of my other
belongings as an opportunity to fast form being wired. And even on the
bus ride over to the airport, I felt compelled to grab my phone and
check…whatever. Email. Facebook. ESPN.com mobile. Texting.
Calling my Dad or a brother. Looking at my tasks that I need to do and
thinking more about what I haven’t yet done and entering it into my cool
task function.
I felt kind of naked. I’m serious - I’ve got this funny thing where I
keep my wallet in one of my front pockets and the phone in the other.
If one of them is gone, I feel lopsided. It’s just not right.
But as I thought about it, I thought about what a sick-o I am. I can’t
go just a few hours without considering what emails are there, or if my
beloved Brewers are staying on top of the NL Central, or if I have new
electronic friends (writing on the facebook wall means it’s official,
right?) Why am I about to clutch my pocket right now looking for my
stupid MWEPDAP? I’ve just given an incredibly stupid abbreviation for
my phone thingy. What the heck is wrong with me?
Did I just say heck? I never say heck. I must be going through
withdrawal. Heck is a G-rated version of saying hell. Christians use
it when they want to avoid something that might be considered a curse
word. But the reality of hell is that it is complete and total absence
of God and all of his goodness. Ironically, Jesus talked more about
hell as a present reality rather than a future destination.
For those of us who follow Jesus, we trust that what we encounter on
this planet is the closet thing we encounter to hell. That someday hell
will be fully vanquished as heaven crashes into earth, and the
significance of the presence of God has brought weight to everything
that is truly good - perhaps even one or two of the functions on my
phone.
Maybe the presence of my phone and all of its cool functions takes space
that God wants for his presence to dwell. Does my phone usher hell into
my life? Maybe not directly; but indirectly it does give me lots of
great reasons to refrain from pausing, reflecting, and asking God the
difficult questions that he wants to deal with in my life. Maybe I need
to be free from my phone for a season for the freedom of my soul.
Speaking of freedom, I just saw a great movie on the plane (the venue
from which I’m writing this entry.) Freedom Writers - Hillary Swank is
the main actress. While it did have cheesy moments, what a great story!
Teacher refuses to give up on idealism and never gives up on her inner
city students. Students succeed - not just in the classroom, but out.
But there is a nice twist in the story that doesn’t make it all heart.
Hillary Swank’s character is married to Patrick Dempsey (or whatever the
name of the good-looking white dude from Grey’s Anatomy…better known
as the who-is-sleeping-with-who-before-surgery-show.) Because of her
passion for her students, this teacher gives all out. She takes two
jobs to pay for the things her students simply don’t receive because of
inequity in the educational system. She has fund raisers to bring in
the woman who housed Anne Frank. It’s phenomenal. I almost cried.
But it has a cost - her marriage. Her husband isn’t supportive of her
passion; he’s ambivalent. And she continues to feed her passion…and
he continues to recoil and is further isolated. He says he can’t be
supportive and “be the wife.” The result is a divorce. And they don’t
work it out, happily-ever-after.
More and more I see how those of us who are involved in passionate
pursuits of our vocation (vocations really means “calling”) the more and
more I see how it strains relationships, particularly marital
relationships. One more email or one more hour becomes two or three.
And the beautiful freedom to passionately pursue vocations becomes the
ugly poison that destroys relationships meant to be something beautiful.
Freedom from things such as MWEPDAP’s are really only good if they
become freedoms to something else that is good; but what happens when
the options of “something else” become the very things that destroy
things that are good? Contrary to what most people believe, “good
intentions” are just not good enough sometimes. Wisdom is required.
Sometimes I develop more questions than answers. I think I’ll leave it
at that because I’m simply not qualified to answer questions about
marriage since I’m not, nor do I intend to soon (read: haven’t found
girl I want to date yet). My years of singleness have blessed me with
opportunities (even the one I’m taking right now in Cairo) that I would
not have pursued if I were married. But freedom is a dangerous thing
because it forces its owner to develop wisdom in order for the privilege
of freedom to be a gift rather than a curse.
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Andy @ 8:00 am CT Comments (0) |
June 22, 2007
Deep Breath before the Plunge (i.e., Anticipation without bad formatting)
You know those feelings of anticipation you get before something big was
about to happen? When I was in high school, I played on the high school
football team. I loved our pre-game ritual. It all started with AC
DC’s Thunderstruck - that wicked opening guitar solo that just wails -
and moved into Queen, Guns ‘N Roses, and other associated jock rock.
I put on my pads, laced up my cleats, tucked in my jersey, checked it in
the mirror, slicked my hair back with water, looked at my red jersey and
white number 44 stare back at me. I’d lead the team out of the locker
room, stare back at them with my respective captains leading warm-ups,
all the while with the band wailing and crowd cheering.
Football has one particular activity that is simply organized chaos: the
kick-off. I was a “gunner” on the end, and my job was to zero in
directly on the kick returner with the goal of planting him as far into
the ground as possible to make him remember to never try running on my
side again. Sometimes, in the process of running full speed down the
field, I’d get knocked from the side so hard that I’d crash to the
ground and wonder for a brief moment where I was. As the kicker raised
his hand, the crowd would cheer louder, and when he started forward it
was the greatest fury of 8 to 15 seconds on the planet. I loved it.
Today, I’m about to embark on something dramatically different. I’m
writing this in anticipation of leaving the country for the next five
weeks living among the people of Mokattam, a community of garbage
collectors. I’m wondering what in the world I’m going to feel, to see,
to smell, and to ultimately be changed. Directing a team of 15 students
and 2 staff, I feel over my head and I’m less than a half step ahead of
the students.
When I would get pumped up for a football game, I’d stare into my own
eyes reflected into the mirror so I knew what my opponent would see
before I pummeled him into the ground. But I’m entering into a place of
poverty that pummels its residents every day.
How do you fight poverty? How do you beat poverty? Can poverty be
beat? I’m not going to find out in five weeks, but at least I can do
put myself in a place where I can understand how poverty beats people,
and seek after God who ultimately hides himself among those who
understand their need for him the most.
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Andy @ 8:15 am CT Comments (0) |
Anticipation
You know those feelings of =
anticipation you
get before something big was about to happen? When I was in high =
school,
I played on the high school football team. I loved our pre-game
ritual. It all started with AC DC’s Thunderstruck – =
that
wicked opening guitar solo that just wails – and moved into Queen, =
Guns ‘N
Roses, and other associated jock rock.
I put on my pads, laced up my =
cleats,
tucked in my jersey, checked it in the mirror, slicked my hair back with =
water,
looked at my red jersey and white number 44 stare back at me. =
I’d lead
the team out of the locker room, stare back at them with my respective =
captains
leading warm-ups, all the while with the band wailing and crowd =
cheering.
Football has one particular activity =
that
is simply organized chaos: the kick-off. I was a =
“gunner” on
the end, and my job was to zero in directly on the kick returner with =
the goal
of planting him as far into the ground as possible to make him remember =
to
never try running on my side again. Sometimes, in the process of =
running
full speed down the field, I’d get knocked from the side so hard =
that I’d
crash to the ground and wonder for a brief moment where I was. As =
the
kicker raised his hand, the crowd would cheer louder, and when he =
started
forward it was the greatest fury of 8 to 15 seconds on the planet. =
I
loved it.
Today, I’m about to embark on
something dramatically different. I’m writing this in =
anticipation
of leaving the country for the next five weeks living among the people =
of Mokattam,
a community of garbage collectors. I’m wondering what in the =
world
I’m going to feel, to see, to smell, and to ultimately be =
changed.
Directing a team of 15 students and 2 staff, I feel over my head and =
I’m
less than a half step ahead of the students.
When I would get pumped up for a =
football
game, I’d stare into my own eyes reflected into the mirror so I =
knew what
my opponent would see before I pummeled him into the ground. But =
I’m
entering into a place of poverty that pummels its residents every =
day.
How do you fight poverty? How =
do you
beat poverty? Can poverty be beat? I’m not going to =
find out
in five weeks, but at least I can do put myself in a place where I can =
understand
how poverty beats people, and seek after God who ultimately hides =
himself among
those who understand their need for him the most.
|
Andy @ 1:51 am CT Comments (0) |