We sat on a bench in the middle of the compound. The concrete paths leading through the gardens slip under our swinging feet and splitting in two directions, on opposite sides of the property, stop at the steps the two homes. One home is for elderly women who are mentally handicapped, the other for "just" elderly women. We came bearing peaches and cards we had spent the morning making. Wishing I was more "spiritual", I wished I wasn't wishing not to be there as we walked through the putrid halls that afternoon. We had passed out all the fruit and cards we had in the homes and now sat, waiting for everyone else to finish doling out their supplies. Continual high pitched shrieks came from the home on our left. One of the ladies had been in a car accident years ago and permanent brain damage was accompanied by the continuing nightmare of her reliving the accident over, and over again.
Across from us, a sweet lady wearing a pink, fluffy robe is smiling at us. She only speaks Hungarian though, so we just smile and nod back.
I am sitting with my little, Romanian friend from the group homes. He is thirteen.
He knows a few words of her language, so as we speak, he offers them every now and then and she smiles even bigger at him.
"Why does no one want her? Look at her."
We were.
"See, she is nice old lady. There is nothing wrong with her..."
Screams from the home for the handicapped echoed over the compound.
"...you know, brain."
"I don't understand these people. If you have family, a mother, why you stick her here to die alone? Why you never come to visit her? Why, if you have mother, you not keep her?"
We continued to observe her as she happily munched her peach.
"And her.."
The screams have grown louder.
"What was the accident for? Yes, God must have had plan for her life. It was to die here?"
He gestured to the home.
Gulp.
What the heck. How am I supposed to respond to that?? I have no answers. None.
He is still talking. Talking about his friend from his home who hit his head. If he was brain damaged, he would end up in a home like this, eventually. Talking about peoples brains. He demonstrates a healthy brain by a fist, and a damaged one by a flat hand with spread fingers. If his friend's brain had been like this, a spread hand, he would be here.
Well, not here. But you know. In one for men.
Yup. I wanted to say, believe me. Walking through the halls, I thought of my kids that had been on my teams at camp. My special needs kids. The ones that will not be able to live alone. The ones who have no future outside of...this. God must have had a plan for them... Was it this? Withering away in some railed bed, staring at some white wall, until death slips in and slips his chilled fingers over their decimated, weary bodies?
I had seen the beginning at the baby hospital. The babies that would grow up, dependent on the state, maybe even go to a christian camp, and then die here. Those babies grow up. And they are here.
Gah. I don't know.
So I tell him that.
"I don't know. All I know is that God is somehow still perfectly good. And that the world is permanently messed up."
I winced inwardly at how my answer seemed to ring with insufficiency in light of the heaviness of our talk. But I had nothing else to offer. And no matter how overwhelming the fallenness of man seems, sin, and all of creation which "groans together", there isn't a better answer. I know He is it.
And I pray for a heavenly perspective. I pray that He overwhelms me with the peace of His sufficiency.
But I know that the closer I see, the more that the placating layers of the worlds lies are peeled back, and when finally, the nakedness of the decimation of sin (my own included) is in front of me, God, in all of His holiness, all of His goodness, in all of His perfectness, stepping down to extend salvation to us...
my heart bows before Him at a loss for words.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Isaiah 61
*Whew*
The first week of camp is over with.
It seems I hardly have time to process all of the experiences I encountered this past week because, already, we are looking ahead to the next.
This week was embodied by the thought of a putting my hand to a plow and not glancing back.
As the Lord continues to show me, I am responsible for faithfulness to speak the gospel, but the weight of responsibility is God's. He changes lives.
My team at the beginning of this week were completely different kids by the end. Some of the feelings they came with were the normal nervousness of meeting new people, but much had to do with emotional barriers that they bear.
By the end of the week, a girl who arrived stone faced was smiling, a boy who had been silent was talking, the one who did not want to be touched did not stop wanting to be hugged, and one that had not made eye contact or participated was constantly begging to be first to compete in games and incessantly asked questions. I loved my kids.
I loved how God orchestrated the perfect team through seemingly random selection of grabbing them off of buses that first day, or trying to win them over from other teams the within the first minutes of loud confusion and general pandemonium. I love how out of chaos and exhaustion, God works to plant seeds of His word in these kids that are so precious to Him. I love how He is changing my perspectives, constantly and consistently. I loved that He taught me too much this week to even begin to sort through, even as I attempt to write thoughts out. I love that through my selfish, useless vessel He can display His selfless love and grace. I loved my kids enthusiasm and laughter. I loved hearing them shout their memory verses in Romanian, and praying that God would make their very recitation of His gospel real to them. I loved getting to know each of my kids, and at the last day, praying over them in ways I didn't even understand and in areas that God had revealed to me.
The last day was hard. Saying goodbye, knowing that this will most likely be the last time I see these specific kids on earth. The tone of my group changed as the camp day began to come to an end. My kids grew a bit somber, and some sat with silent tears.
In a sense, this week was highly unfair. I was sad to see them go, but I am surrounded by people who love me. I have a very real representation of Christ's love through my family and friends back home. At the end of my stay here, I will go back to stability and comfort.
For most of these kids, this week was it. If their home allows our follow up program to do classes, this won't be their only contact with those bearing Christ's name, and God works in ways and through people however He chooses. But this week was the most obvious, focused expression of love specifically to each kid that they can expect to experience all year. What broke my heart the most was to see the kids who made so much progress throughout the week retreat back into silence, or anger, or another burden they came with...
and we cannot preach the "American gospel" to "fix" them.
In orientation, we learned of a young girl one year who asked if she accepted prayed to God, would she stop being raped every night when she went back to her home? The American leader encouraged her that God would protect her.
With a face set like a stone, she approached her leader the next day. Through the translator she communicated, "You said to pray, that God would save me. And still, I was raped. I want nothing to do with your religion."
We can make no promises to these kids that if they just accept Christ, they will end up happy and successful here on earth. We do not say, if you believe in God, your parents will come back, or someone will adopt you. We cannot assure them that believing in God will keep them from being abused, if not by a worker, than by another of the kids in their home.
Instead, we promise them what Christ offered. We promise them His comfort, joy, and peace despite circumstances. We preach eternal life and hope. We offer a love that doesn't abandon, and grace that extends far beyond our knowledge and understanding.
As God has been redefining my understanding of the gospel, this was the hardest to learn, let alone live.
In my human understanding, strength and sovereignty mean protection and comfort.
But again, this is my human understanding.
Christ offers an eternal perspective on life that supersedes anything we could encounter on earth.
Why He would choose to use someone like me, who has hardly experienced any form of real suffering to bring his gospel to those who have experienced the harshest form of hardship, is completely beyond my understanding. Perhaps the Lord chose to include us, the American church, hardly because, as we seem to think, we are a super spiritual, equipped people who have the best resources and most knowledge on how to help the world's "least of these". But in that we are the least equipped. Yes, we have resources beyond the people whom we minister to could dream of. We have access to the Word and freedom of opinion more than we could appreciate...
But to a child who experiences the vicious cycle of abandonment, one who experiences the very worst of human sin nature, forces of evil, and a fallen world... Are our pampered, manicured hands, the extension of Christ's body, the most equipped? Hardly. But, is not our God most glorified in what we are most ill equipped for?
As we have been called to...a planting of the Lord for a display of His splendor. -Isaiah 61:3
The first week of camp is over with.
It seems I hardly have time to process all of the experiences I encountered this past week because, already, we are looking ahead to the next.
This week was embodied by the thought of a putting my hand to a plow and not glancing back.
As the Lord continues to show me, I am responsible for faithfulness to speak the gospel, but the weight of responsibility is God's. He changes lives.
My team at the beginning of this week were completely different kids by the end. Some of the feelings they came with were the normal nervousness of meeting new people, but much had to do with emotional barriers that they bear.
By the end of the week, a girl who arrived stone faced was smiling, a boy who had been silent was talking, the one who did not want to be touched did not stop wanting to be hugged, and one that had not made eye contact or participated was constantly begging to be first to compete in games and incessantly asked questions. I loved my kids.
I loved how God orchestrated the perfect team through seemingly random selection of grabbing them off of buses that first day, or trying to win them over from other teams the within the first minutes of loud confusion and general pandemonium. I love how out of chaos and exhaustion, God works to plant seeds of His word in these kids that are so precious to Him. I love how He is changing my perspectives, constantly and consistently. I loved that He taught me too much this week to even begin to sort through, even as I attempt to write thoughts out. I love that through my selfish, useless vessel He can display His selfless love and grace. I loved my kids enthusiasm and laughter. I loved hearing them shout their memory verses in Romanian, and praying that God would make their very recitation of His gospel real to them. I loved getting to know each of my kids, and at the last day, praying over them in ways I didn't even understand and in areas that God had revealed to me.
The last day was hard. Saying goodbye, knowing that this will most likely be the last time I see these specific kids on earth. The tone of my group changed as the camp day began to come to an end. My kids grew a bit somber, and some sat with silent tears.
In a sense, this week was highly unfair. I was sad to see them go, but I am surrounded by people who love me. I have a very real representation of Christ's love through my family and friends back home. At the end of my stay here, I will go back to stability and comfort.
For most of these kids, this week was it. If their home allows our follow up program to do classes, this won't be their only contact with those bearing Christ's name, and God works in ways and through people however He chooses. But this week was the most obvious, focused expression of love specifically to each kid that they can expect to experience all year. What broke my heart the most was to see the kids who made so much progress throughout the week retreat back into silence, or anger, or another burden they came with...
and we cannot preach the "American gospel" to "fix" them.
In orientation, we learned of a young girl one year who asked if she accepted prayed to God, would she stop being raped every night when she went back to her home? The American leader encouraged her that God would protect her.
With a face set like a stone, she approached her leader the next day. Through the translator she communicated, "You said to pray, that God would save me. And still, I was raped. I want nothing to do with your religion."
We can make no promises to these kids that if they just accept Christ, they will end up happy and successful here on earth. We do not say, if you believe in God, your parents will come back, or someone will adopt you. We cannot assure them that believing in God will keep them from being abused, if not by a worker, than by another of the kids in their home.
Instead, we promise them what Christ offered. We promise them His comfort, joy, and peace despite circumstances. We preach eternal life and hope. We offer a love that doesn't abandon, and grace that extends far beyond our knowledge and understanding.
As God has been redefining my understanding of the gospel, this was the hardest to learn, let alone live.
In my human understanding, strength and sovereignty mean protection and comfort.
But again, this is my human understanding.
Christ offers an eternal perspective on life that supersedes anything we could encounter on earth.
Why He would choose to use someone like me, who has hardly experienced any form of real suffering to bring his gospel to those who have experienced the harshest form of hardship, is completely beyond my understanding. Perhaps the Lord chose to include us, the American church, hardly because, as we seem to think, we are a super spiritual, equipped people who have the best resources and most knowledge on how to help the world's "least of these". But in that we are the least equipped. Yes, we have resources beyond the people whom we minister to could dream of. We have access to the Word and freedom of opinion more than we could appreciate...
But to a child who experiences the vicious cycle of abandonment, one who experiences the very worst of human sin nature, forces of evil, and a fallen world... Are our pampered, manicured hands, the extension of Christ's body, the most equipped? Hardly. But, is not our God most glorified in what we are most ill equipped for?
As we have been called to...a planting of the Lord for a display of His splendor. -Isaiah 61:3
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