The question I probably get asked the most by you fine folks back home is:
Why haven’t you posted a blog lately? What is the Race like?
If that isn’t a loaded question indeed…
Well, what can I say? What do you really want to know here? What could I tell you about how the Race has changed me? Trying to explain what I have learned or experienced on the Race is like trying to explain what you will experience in life to a child, because the Race is just like living life; I just happen to be living life halfway around the world with some people that I’m honored to call my family for 11 months.
I could tell you about the faces of orphans who live in squalor and sleep on concrete, who never know if they are going to be abducted or simply picked up by police to be dumped in a public prison for the 20th time; and that no one will notice either way. That the only life they know is violence and hunger.
I could tell you stories of prostitutes who are either forced into the sex trade or who choose it willingly, simply because they can make more money putting up with the rough touch of a broken man in one night than they can make in one week of hard labour in a factory. About how their pimps and proprietors keep them drugged so they are complacent.
I could tell you of people who live in spiritual bondage, who believe they are fated to live in destitution and can never rise up and live full, beautiful lives. That they scrape around in the dirt for a morsel of food, or waste all of their hard-earned money on drugs, alcohol, and sex because no one ever taught them that there is more to life than dulling the pain.
I could even regale you with tales of those who stand in the gap, who wade into the filth on behalf of others, out of the core of their own hearts:
Like how a group of women in the Philippines are doing their damndest to show some street kids in a gang that just because they don’t have a home and that the world has forgotten them, they can still be kids and that Jesus hasn’t forgotten them. They work and work to love these kids, feed them everyday, offer them free education, and a sense of identity; they are even building a home for these kids. Something these children may never have had before.
Or about a family in Laos who, because the country is closed to missions, works along side the Laos people to care for and provide jobs for them. They are alone in the middle of rural Laos with two children, one of them a newborn, living out maybe the best example of discipleship I have ever seen; sharing life with the Laos people and showing them laughter, love, and joy.
In Cambodia there is a man, humbly seeking after God, who is struggling with his ministry. He runs a school and has also taken in about 20 kids and gives them a home and an education, all on his own expense. This man has sold his home and sacrificed much to continue the dream God has given him. Many of his supporters have abandoned him, and he considers $20 USD a miracle because he can feed the youth in his care one more day. Sadly, this is one of hundreds of stories of men and women struggling to help others, and no one knows.
These are just a few of the stories that I have encountered on this one year journey, let alone the other 30 people on my squad, and the other 17 squads out on the field currently. What is the common factor? What could I express to you from the very core of who I have become that could move you?
Nothing. I am but a man, who was quite broken in a multitude of ways, surrounded by a species who are broken. You made be thinking to yourself, “Now hey, wait a minute, sir, I have lived a beautiful life and am a successful *insert profession here* with a great family and strong convictions.” That’s fine, but what are tears? What is sadness? What is dread, anxiety, and fear? I believe they are unnatural and yet necessary symptoms of a greater sickness: separation.
I am not trying to be an evangelist here, I am merely sharing my heart on this matter. Take it or leave it.
The people that I have met, the sickness and sorrow I have witnessed? You know what they were separated from?
Love.
A wiser man than I once said that ,”love covers a multitude of sins.” I think it does more than that, I believe it casts out all darkness and brokenness. Those who live in fear, who are depressed, who are in pain? Could it be that they do not have someone to love them?
There is a part in the ministry of Jesus that I love: a lawyer asks Jesus one day what is the greatest commandment. Now that is a big deal, the commandments were the basis for the entirety of Jewish society. This guy basically asked Jesus, “Hey, what should our baseline ethical foundation be?” Jesus’s answer? Love God and love one another. Wait, that’s it? That seems really simple…
WHAT IF IT IS?!
What if it isn’t about our dogmatic belief structures? What if the God of infinite movement, a being who created an ever expanding and evolving universe, does not prescribe to theories, but to action! What if love is not an idea but a choice?
If I could be so audacious, I think I understand why Jesus prayed for those about to destroy him. He understood love as an action, and that the words love and serve are interchangeable.
I see the separation and lack of love around me and I know the cure. It is the responsibility of those of us who have received love into our hearts to love/serve those who haven’t. I one day wish to see everyone the way that Jesus saw his killers. With the eyes of love.
So what am I going to say to you when I get home about my trip? Who knows? You will never be able to understand what I experienced because I experienced it. Yet you have your own experiences, your own separation. I pray that you have been given what you were separated from, so that you will be ready to serve/love the broken.
You do not need to go around the world to do that. You need only wake up and choose to take the form of a servant/lover, and be in motion. Choose.
