I’m Done With This

“It’s like that quote, ‘never again can I say “I did not know”’ – I want to live out of a place where I am leading others to that reality”.
 
This was my answer in a coffee shop in the middle of Phnom Penh to the question, “are you being called to be an overseas missionary?” We were meeting with the founder of a sex-traffic prevention ministry that we worked with in Thailand. And that’s the question he asked us. I wanted to laugh in his face. The race has scared me away from any long-term commitment overseas.
 
Ok, maybe it hasn’t scared me away. But it has smacked me with the reality of the challenge of being an overseas missionary. It’s hard. And the magnitude of the brokenness we see on a daily basis is something you would not dream of seeing in your worst nightmare.
 
I’m living in a country right now where just over 30 years ago over 2 million people were killed by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.
 
2 million people.

 
We hear about the 6+ million people that were killed by Hitler seven decades ago. But we don’t often hear about this specific tragedy in Cambodia. And if we do, it’s brief and insensitive.
 
Through my reading of “First They Killed My Father” by Loung Ung – a first-hand account of the pain experienced during the Khmer Rouge – I am taken into the nightmare of Cambodia just 35 years ago. The screams that were drowned out by the loud speakers and the father’s who were taken from their families, never to return. That’s what happened to Loung’s family, but only after her older sister was taken to a labor camp to die of malnutrition and dysentery.
 
These injustices have been rampant since the fall of Eden. And they happen to people just like you and me.
 
I’m also reading a fictional account of racism in the South in the same era as Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. I was struck by the story of a fictional character, Celeste, a negro girl who moves from Detroit, Michigan to Mississippi. Her white friend tells her not to stand up in her house, but to crouch at all times so that nobody will see her and shoot her.
 
This is not just a fiction story. It happened. That was a negro’s reality not long ago in The United States of America…
 
And as I write this over 20 million people are enslaved in the sex industry around the world. And The Democratic Republic of the Congo? Oh, well, they are saying it has been worse than World War II. But we don’t hear about it.
 
The water crisis is devastating. And if we, Americans, would just spend a little less on one Christmas, we would be able to provide enough wells to provide water for every person on this globe. Don’t believe me? Look up the statistics.
 
I don’t know that I want to be a “full-time” overseas missionary. But I must live in a place where I am begging people to live in the reality of “never can I say I did not know”.
 
What does that mean?
 
It means stepping out of the bubble of ourselves.
Out of our complacency and apathy.
 
It’s to know the hungry.
To know the sick.
To be friends with the prostitute.
To see the murderers.
To hold the dying.
To visit the prisoner.
 
It’s to feel the pain of our neighbor as if it was us, ourselves.
 
Because it is, then and only then, that you will declare, “never again can I say I did not know”.
 
And that’s my mission. It’s to never again turn my naked eye and say “I just didn’t know.” The unfortunate, beautiful and challenging reality is that – I DO know. I know. I’ve experienced it.
 
And I want to live in a place where I am constantly leading people to that reality. Not that they would give their lives to being a missionary. But that they would live a little bit different. That they know the heartbeat of the Father a bit more closely, because they know what He knows.
 
Because their heart beats for what His heart beats for.
 
Never again can I say I do not know…
 
…and if you are reading this, than neither can you. You’ve seen it through this journey that Jesus has lead me on. You’ve seen the pictures. Read the stories.
 
WE, can never again say we did not know.
 
So, how can we live differently because we do know? How can we be about bringing the Kingdom to a broken world, because we know Jesus is the only hope?
 
We’ve been given a voice, so let’s use it. God has placed us on this earth for such a time as this. He has destined us to have a voice over those that cannot speak for themselves. I don’t get it and I don’t know why He chose you and me to have a voice over others. But He did.
 
So let’s be a voice for the voiceless. Let’s be a light in the darkness.