As we cross the 40-day mark until our return to the good ol’ U.S. Of A. (which is CRAZY), I’ve come to a realization about coming home: I will most likely be a little bit annoying for a while. Now, I’m sure God will somehow use these fumbling lips to share some of the amazing stuff he has done this year, but I think enough of me will come out to annoy you a bit. So…sorry. Let me explain a bit.
During the last couple weeks we’ve been joined here at our ministry in Romania by a couple different youth groups from Texas. Overall I’ve really enjoyed our brief time with them, talking about missions, life back in the states, the question mark we call the future, and everything else, and just being able to communicate with Americans, which is always a bit refreshing on the race. However, it was in these conversations that this darkness of my annoyance potential began to reveal itself.
You see, not many people travel around the world for a year. Not many people leave home for a year and live out of a backpack. Not many people experience most of the things we’ve experienced on this trip. Now, in these conversations, these facts tend to come up, in varying contexts. There have been too many instances in hearing a statement from one of these fresh-out-of-the-states Texans, most often an observation of the different culture or some other difficulty or frustration, and my knee-jerk reaction was to relish this opportunity for comparison. A critique of the driving or road conditions here in Romania is greeted by my references to the much worse dirt roads of Africa and reckless drivers of Asia that we so valiantly endured. A side comment on the unfamiliar Romanian pizza toppings is scoffed off in reference to our white rice diets and our exaggerated near-starvation of Nepal. Clearly, they can’t even approach our experiences, and I get to retain my position securely above you.
I recall Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together,â€� where he considers the instance when “The disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’â€� Bonhoeffer insisted that “no Christian community ever comes together without this argument appearing as a seed of discord.â€� I see in these instances the same question dwelling in my heart, aspiring for greatness before the Lord in comparison to my fellow brothers and sisters and the rest of the world, and that same seed of discord attempting to take root. There’s an ugliness within that wants His glory, by whatever means necessary.
“For
who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did
not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you
did not?�
I guess the solution is the same as those disciples coming before Jesus: “whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.â€� I don’t know exactly what it’s going to take to cultivate this humility, to embrace the reality that I am merely an undeserving and ungrateful recipient. All I’ve experienced was by His leading, all I’ve endured was by His strength, all I’ve been given has been by His blessing. None of it ought to be perverted as though it were my own, and to come away from this trip considering myself greater before the Lord or any man would be an utter perversion of grace, and a genuine waste of anything this year was intended to be. I pray and stand in faith that it won’t be so.
So…sorry in advance. I invite your honesty for my annoyance…I clearly don’t need or deserve the glory it’s attempting to garner. And you probably don’t really care about hearing about white rice for the 37th time as much I didn’t like eating it the 37th time.
