rukungiri part 2 – play your cards.

Maybe it’s not about being white or
American.  Maybe it’s not about my physical presence or the
conversation we have.  Maybe it’s about more.  Maybe it’s about being different.  Maybe it’s about love – a different kind of love.  A love that doesn’t come from me, but through me – from something within.  Maybe they can literally feel a love coming from me that I’m not
even aware I’m giving off.  God says that those who live life for him
will be filled with a supernatural ability to love – that his joy
will resonate all around us.  Maybe that’s what these people are
seeing.  Maybe they don’t even know why.  God is at work all the time
all around us.  Sometimes we’re aware of it and we label it “God.” 
Sometimes we’re aware of it and we mis-label it “us” or “nature”
or “coincidence.”   Most of the time I think we’re totally unaware
of it.  But he’s still working.  He’s working in us and through us. 
He’s loving in us and through us. 

 

 

Sometimes we turn helping people into a
production. So often in the western world, “helping people”
becomes synonymous with throwing a benefit or fund-raiser, or
donating X amount of stuff, or writing a fat check.  By no means am I
saying that those things are bad.  What I am saying is that those
things are just one, very large-scale, aspect of what it means to
help people.  They are a material answers to material problems – but what if the source is deeper than that.  These past few months in Africa, I have been learning about what it means to help
by meeting people’s spiritual and emotional needs.  I am learning
about the small scale, the human scale, the personal scale – which just may be, in God’s eyes, the more
important side of things. 

 

Helping people doesn’t have to be a
production.  It doesn’t have to be extravagant or large.  It doesn’t
have to be about numbers or statistics.  It doesn’t even have to be
complete or all-encompassing.  We don’t have to provide end solutions, because in the end, there is only one solution – and it’s not us.  Since God is doing it all – since God has done it all – for us, it just has to be about love.  It has
to be about caring more about other people than we care about
ourselves.  It has to be about choosing his will and his kingdom over my will and my kingdom. 

 

So this month I have realized that for God to use us, he doesn’t need weeks or months or years, but minutes and moments.  I have come to terms with the fact that, right or wrong or backwards by the world’s standards, if

I can make someone’s day or week or month by
simply sitting on their couch, then I’ll do it.  At the heart of
everything, I’m here to encourage, love, and help people.  It’s sad, but it sometimes it feels like an apology to say that the
best way I can help people feel encouraged and loved is to simply
spend some time with them.  Why is it that we so often place so much value on the material, physical needs and neglect or undermine people’s spiritual, emotional, and relational needs?  Why is it so hard for us to see what’s really important?

 

Being here, seeing so much poverty,
so much need, can sometimes make you wonder why you were born where
you were, or to the family you were, or with the talents, abilities,
or gifts you’ve been given. Sometimes you can start to feel bad that
you’ve been given so much, and these amazing, beautiful, kind,
loving, hospitable people have been given so little. You begin to
wonder if maybe the fact that these people haven’t been handed the
life you have is exactly the reason they are all those things.