Rumored Thought (Pt. 2)

Check out Part 1

Safety in mission is a relative impossibility, rather implausibility.

My dad told me just before I trounced off to Egypt for a summer, “I know you’ll be safe, ‘cause you’re in the center of God’s will -- but I guess that’s not safe, it’s just right.”

We can’t embark on mission and expect to come out the other side the same. We’ll be changed; we’ll be effected by what we’ve seen, whom we’ve spoken to, and the relationships we’ve built.

If we informally understand safety as the retention of normality than we must never see mission as safe. (And more often than not when we, as modern Americans, talk about safety we mean the normal.)

Internationally I’ve been in some rather dangerous experiences all for the sake of mission (things I’ve not told my mom… until she reads this that is), it wasn’t safe. Locally I’ve been in situations just as hairy.

My point is this: mission will never leave us the same. It won’t allow us to be just as spunky as we were when we were kids. It’ll wear our souls out and cause us to be ragged and rough. It won’t polish us up and let us be the neat little Christian legalism has told us we ought to be.

“The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure, 


One little word shall fell him….

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;

The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,

His kingdom is forever.”

Life is a tempest, which will drowned our tiny boats eventually. We are not as we once were; we are not children anymore. No, and the cares of life have brought us the realization of reality. So why should mission be different? Why should mission cause us to be clean and neat and safe when it asks us to do precisely opposite?

No. No, mission isn’t safe, and we’ll not come out the other side of it the same. Thank God.

A Far Too Common Story

She walked into the bar. Tired, worn down and out. The bags under her eyes were obvious, the same clothes she had on yesterday cling to her skin. There’s a look of desperation in her face, of worry and torment.

Flopping into a seat near the bar she orders her drink. Huddling over it once it arrives she begins to gingerly milk it little sips here, little sips there. Tears, and possibly a scream seem to be close to bursting from her.

She’d been here last night, this bar. But then she was vibrant and happy, laughing at the stupid jokes and dancing the night away. But now she seems broken.

He’d been a nice enough guy. Seemed to genuinely care. He bought a few rounds for her and her friends and made polite small talk. After she’d denied his advances of becoming a little too physical he left. She thought nothing of it at all.

She’d parked too far away from the safety of the lights, she’d said goodbye to her friends, and she was alone.

He took her. He raped her.

Here she sits the next day weeping into a cup of coffee. Trying to find what she’d lost at the place she had it last.

It’s the story of far to many women.

It’s the fear they’ll never tell.

But it’s a travesty.

To believe the lie of being, ‘broken,’ and therefore unwanted. To remember the youth group teaching, “Who would want someone who’s not a virgin?” Yet that’s the lie.

God wants the broken. It’s the culmination of Christianity. That the destitute are redeemed, that the broken are made whole.

There’s a Redeemer who’s come to save. The righteous has no need of saving, it’s the sick that need the Doctor, and it’s the broken that need the Mender. It’s the raped that need the Healer.

So to Jesus she runs, to him, who'll treat her like the daughter she is, she clings. Away from the mire of the past and into the glory of the future. Because hope has come.

In all seriousness: If this story is you, don't let the boy who did this get away. There are many who will help. There are friends who'll listen. You, of all people, are not alone.

Mercy Falling From the Sky

The rain falls; I can hear it out my window. The thunder claps, frightening the cat. The grey morning begins to shine. Mercy is falling from the sky.

Often the thought never sticks and the idea floats away that all we know and all we have is a mercy so undeserved.

We deserve immediate death.

The replacement of this rain with the fires of hell, but yet it rains on outside.

How long will it take for us to see?

The party doesn’t last, the drink doesn’t quench, and the cigarette must be followed by another. Thing upon thing we’ve used to supplant the Supreme. And time after time we’ve seen them to fail.

Insane is what we are, the textbook definition tells us. Repeating the same action hoping for a different outcome.

But…

God.

Frees us from our repeating of nothing and causes us to do something. Saves us from our captivity and calls us to be satisfied in him. To throw away all the ignorant vices we once had and cling to the cross.

While it won’t be easy, it’ll be worth it. While it won’t be safe, it’ll be worth it. While the journey will kill us, it’ll bring us to our Savior whose beckoning us home.

My Past

I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing lately. Remembering things I’ve done and places I’ve been in contrast to where and who I am now.

Typically I don’t look back. (but I may try to forget some things, but even those things are daring to be remembered too.)

Red Lobster, that’s where it began. Eating a lovely meal with grandma. Thinking, “Tables were never this clean in Egypt and food was never this good in Uganda.” Seeing, in stark contrast mind you, the difference from where I was and where I am.

That’s where many of my thoughts have been lately.

There’s a dirty and bland world out there. There are starving children and kids with AK-47’s killing each other and their families. There are women dying in the streets far away from their home. And a man with one hand no lips, no eyes, and acid burns on his face begging for money in a dank corner of a Ugandan market.

We’d consider it out-of-control, they’d consider it normal.

Egypt I loved, Uganda scared me, Israel was homely, Amsterdam was crazy, and Frankfurt was too short.

This isn’t a list of credentials to be read and envied. It’s not a look-at-me-I’m-better-than-you-cause-I-traveled list. It’s just a dude remembering how good we’ve got it here in, “no-where,” Wichita, Kansas.

We can drink the water in the showers, and brush our teeth from faucet water and not a bottle. We all (for the most part) have cars (no matter how crappy they are). Houses, safety, and pets we don’t have to eat.

No-where Wichita seems like a vacation compared to war-torn Africa. #justsaying