And on Your Right, You Will See Jesus
Me: A little known fact about me is I’ve always secretly wanted to be a tour guide. In college I was fascinated by the girls and guys who would navigate the campus, walking backwards no less, spewing out fact after fact about the history of Texas A&M for the visitors. I always thought it would be really cool to know the ins and outs and hidden places of the school and let visitors in on all the secrets. The same desire crept up when I lived in New York. I would spend hours walking through Central Park trying to find all the spots I had either heard about or seen in movies. The Strawberry Fields memorial to John Lennon, the Wolfman ice skating rink that is more than a handful of films such as Serendipity, Sheep’s Meadow where incidentally there are no sheep. I imagined leading groups of tourists through the maze of walkways and various sections of the massive park, telling them with a native arrogance the pride and prestige of the green handprint with in the jungle of concrete. To this day I don’t even know if tours are given through Central Park, but it seemed like a great idea to me. Tour guide, travel agent…if someone was going somewhere, I wanted to tell them the great places to see once they got there.
The book: So I finally got around to reading Velvet Elvis. I can’t count how many times I have been asked, “Have you read Velvet Elvis?” immediately after stating that I had read Blue Like Jazz. Because of this I had a stigma in my mind that Velvet Elvis was the latest fad book and I was to stay far away. Heaven forbid I get into something that would make me look like I was “in the know”. Therefore, like most popular things, it takes me about 2-4 years to finally get around to doing the “in” thing…where in I quickly discover, “oh, now I understand why everyone likes this…it’s great!” (i.e.- capris, hair straighteners, pretty much any kind of music…even Facebook) and yes, I always kick myself for just not doing it to begin with…but as my mother would say, I am one hard headed girl!
Anyway, I read it. And I loved it! I still have no idea what the heck the title means, but I suppose that doesn’t really matter. Like with the author of Blue Like Jazz, the author, Rob Bell, is basically letting you into the stream of thoughts rolling around in his head. Thoughts about the Bible, Jesus, life…and most of his thoughts come out as questions. Infact there are probably more questions put out there than actual definitive statements…because like the saying goes, the more you learn about God, the more questions you have…Bell didn’t write the book to give answers. I think he wrote it because he’s convinced that we, as believers, have many of the same questions, no matter how much we love Jesus.
The point: Bell says this: missionaries are like tour guides. We don’t bring God with us where we go, as if He wasn’t already there, but rather simply point Him out for others to see. We, as missionaries…and Christians for that matter…are meant to open eyes that were previously blind to the reality that Jesus has been in their midst the entire time. God is heavy…I already carry 40 pounds of life on my back as I travel this world…To think that I am also suppose to bring God with me everywhere I go would be back breaking!!
As I type this, I am sitting in Monkey Bay on the southern shore of Lake Malawi. The scene is breathtaking! I haven’t seen a cloud in the sky for 3 days now, the sun sparkles off the rippling water, and there are about 20 African kids playing ball on the sand. Earlier I took a swim in the clear water and the little boy who lives behind the house we are staying in came to join me. This little boy is deaf…and beautiful! Miraculously after months of prayer, he is beginning to hear a bit in his right ear, but for right now he can’t hear anything softer than a yell. While playing, I put him on my back and swam like a submarine so he could ride on top of the water, and when we reached deep waters that only I could stand in I carried him back to the shore….all of this was done in complete silence. I had a “God moment” in that lake. I wished I could have pointed to the sun and said the sun shines because of God. I wished I could have pointed to the mountains that jut up on the horizon of the water and said those mountains stand because of God. I even wished that I could have told that boy that the reason he is beginning to hear is because God is the Master Healer and loves him so much. The sun and the mountains have always been there…they have always displayed His majesty…but has anyone told the people?? Has anyone simply pointed Him out in their midst??
And it is here that I go back to my question after reading the book…Have I been doing this?? Have I been pointing God out as I have been traveling the world?? Does anyone that I have come in contact with see God where they didn’t before?? To those questions, all I can say is I don’t know. I hope so….but I can’t be sure. Maybe that passage struck me because I hadn’t really thought about my role this year as such. Maybe I had thought that I was bringing God from the USA to the world…I was carrying Him with me…instead of realizing that He was already where I hadn’t yet been. He is already in that group of widows as they sing every morning in Malawi. He is already in that bar in Thailand where girls sell themselves to feed their families. He is already in a slum in the Dominican Republic where poverty smells horrible.
