We walked into the BEAM house, the living quarters for our new ministry this month. Month 2 and we’re still in South Africa, and I’m not complaining. I love it here.
We dove into BEAM ministry by unloading huge quantities of vegetables, tomato sauce and boxes of bananas from a truck. Then we assisted in distributing the food en masse to poverty-stricken locals and other organizations that run soup kitchens for the hungry. We played with the children who attend the daycare center and were happily covered in dust, dirt and sweat for the day.
What God had in store for us was like nothing I’ve ever laid eyes on. We entered a huge estate surrounded with lush gardens, beautiful terraces, red dirt pathways, stone tile verandas with epic pillars and savannah style mural paintings adorning the premises. Amidst all this beauty, there were hidden treasures of prayer gardens, a rustic wooden cross and plenty of niches for alone time in the outdoors.
The house itself is expansive, with white elegant crown molding, more pillars, more stone tiling, heavy wooden lodge style furnishings, and bathrooms more remnant of resorts than mission housing.
Team Shekinah giggled and wide-eyed gasped at how God was lavishing us this month. What did we do to deserve this? And we’re alone and away from the chaos of being housed with a bunch of other groups this month too! Score.
(For those of you who don’t know what feedback is it’s this World Race method of getting people to speak openly in both affirmation and correction toward each other daily while living in community.)
Admittedly, the night before arriving to BEAM house, we’d had our first real down-n-dirty constructive feedback session that involved more construction and less affirmation than had ever occurred on team Shekinah as of yet. The toe-dipping ended and people got uncomfortable and raw – in a really good way. Time will prove if we can keep up the momentum.
But it was uncomfortable for almost everyone nonetheless. I think this explained a lot of the awkward silence and the lack of forthcoming feedback the first night in this house. We’re girls. We have feelings and lots of them.
Toes had been stepped on, and people were still trying to understand why constructive feedback had occurred in the first place. Not everyone is happy with correction and keeping things real – even though we all profess how real we like to be, the proof is in how we take it and dish it back. And taking it to the Lord is key, also not something that comes natural to carnal man.
We were (and still are) in the process of being humbled. All of us. Nobody here is perfect. Nobody here has farts that smell like roses, if you catch my drift.
But comments had been dropped with somber faces as we walked the hallways, when we first entered: “Oh yeah, this month is going to be rough…mmhmm.” Clearly, that was code for “feedback is coming at you.”
That comment was charged with an undertone of threat.
Glances were exchanged.
It was a promise.
We could all hear it.
Feedback ought to come from a place of love. We are supposed to be calling each other into greatness and speaking truth in grace and in love. We are supposed to be holding people to a standard of holiness and be Christ-like. We are supposed to love one another. We are supposed to feel safe to open up; but being vulnerable requires humility.
When it was declared that this month was going to be rough, we spoke something into existence that we could never, ever in a million years fathom.
It’s true; God had absolutely in His amazing grace and loving mercy blessed us with a luxuriously lavish and comfortable house. We had received extravagance. And He did this to call team Shekinah into a greatness that we weren’t yet living up to – because He loves us and He is good.
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:1-3
The words of apostle Paul in this season couldn’t have been more timely. All of a sudden, God in His divine providence and loving kindness united team Shekinah by bringing us to our knees.
It happened in the blink of an eye, and it shattered all the walls that had been thrown up and resisting unity with a single phone call.
It’s been rough.
Let me say that God is good and He loves us. He has given us so much peace these last few days.
The unthinkable way in which God humbled us and brought us together in lowliness and gentleness bearing with one another in love was through a tragic death.
Our first night in the house, we sat silently for a long time before floodgates opened and we hashed out some things that had been brought up at feedback.
But the next day, none of those things mattered as we all gathered around our sister and silence was cast out amidst the sound of our sobs and prayers.
Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.
James 4:9-10
Laine is back in California to bury her mother Laura. We, as a team, weep with those who weep and mourn with those that mourn. We stand united and send our love and prayers.
