A Closer Look at Life

Blessed to be a Witness

One night during my sophomore year of college, my roommate came home insisting that I listen to a song that he had just heard.  It was Ben Harper’s “Waiting on an Angel.”  It only took one playing to cement itself in my soul, and Ben’s politically aware, spiritually sensitive music became a major part of the soundtrack of my life. 

Three years later, Harper released the album “Diamonds on the Inside”, which wouldn’t reach my ears for another two years.  When I finally stopped to really listen to it, I discovered the song “Blessed to be a Witness.” Go ahead, take a look at the lyrics. When you set this song among the rest of Harper’s deeply emotive, and even spiritual, works including “Power of the Gospel” and “Picture of Jesus”, a picture of curiosity leading into reverence for the Divine begins to emerge.

What has stuck with me about these songs is that Harper, while avowing to be spiritually aware, is not a Christian.  None the less, his words have been a lesson for me of humility towards the person of Jesus Christ.

So may Christians feel that they are indispensable in the service of the Kingdom.  Having been told over and over again of the value of proclaiming Him to the world, many of us have begun to believe that He is begging us to serve Him to assuage a need He is experiencing.  In my familiarity with the Gospel, I routinely fall prey to the notion that I am providing a service to God, or worse yet, doing him a valuable favor by “sacrificing” my life or my time in the service of others. 

The truth of the matter is much closer to what Ben may be trying to express.  As John Piper puts it in his Let the Nations be Glad, we are in the business of commending Christ to the nations. 

This notion of commendation implies an awe and a praise for that which is being commended.  To truly commend Christ to those who share our world, we must first be brought to a place where praising and truly worshiping Him can occur. 

This is where Harper’s lines hit home for me.  Only when I am worshiping Christ, only when I truly feel blessed, honored and even overwhelmed to bear His name will I be commending Him to the nations.  If I attempt to proclaim the Gospel with any less fervor for Him, I am only commending my efforts on His behalf, which is not very good news at all. 

Happy Easter

This last weekend, churches were bursting at the seams with hordes of guilt-ridden parishioners crammed into pews left vacant since Christmas.  News outlets treated us to shots of Catholics by the thousands in Rome, reported on with the quizzically distant attitude that could have been applied to the birth of a polar bear in a German zoo.
On Monday, we were back to a steady diet of news clips about bombings and rigged elections and riots that may or may not be happening in Tibet. 

The question that comes to mind for me as I read the news is where does the hope of Christ fit into a world so full of hurt and pain and violence?  He may have died for us all, and He may have risen again to victory, but what do we do when it doesn’t look like victory yet?

Here are a couple of thoughts that have helped me keep the broken nature of this world in perspective.

The D-Day Analogy
(As with all analogies, this will fall apart at some point, so take it for what it’s worth.)
Someone (I have no memory of where I first heard this.) once likened the state of the world today to the fighting that went on in Europe between June 6, 1944 and VE Day on May 8, 1945.  For all intents and purposes, the war in Europe ended when the first American boot hit the beach in Normandy.  Many, many people, soldiers and civilians alike, still had to die before the inevitable conclusion of that conflict came to pass, but the ultimate victory of the Allied forces had already been assured. 

So it is with those who fight and sacrifice to ensure that ignorance and hatred do not consume the poor and destitute and defenseless.  When Christ asks us to expend ourselves in behalf of the poor, he is not asking us to give ourselves needlessly in a hopeless cause.  While the ultimate victory over sin and death has been assured by His death and resurrection, there must still be sacrifices made by those of us who remain on this earth until history reaches whatever culmination awaits us. 

The Words of Patrick Johnstone
(From the book Operation World)
“All the earth-shattering awesome forces unleashed on the world are released by the Lord Jesus Christ.  He reigns today.  He is in the control room of the universe.  He is the only Ultimate Cause; all the sins of man and machinations of Satan ultimately have to enhance the glory and kingdom of our Saviour.  This is true of our world today—in wars, famines, earthquakes or the evil that apparently has the ascendancy.”

While this may seem radical, it is a logical outworking of the ramifications of the existence of an all Almighty God.  Were He anything less than truly omnipotent, there would be events and processes that ended up outside of his prevue.  This statement does not demand that we know or understand how the events in this life will glorify Him, merely that we trust in him enough to believe that He is who he says he is even when our present condition gives little evidence to support that belief. 

This is just part of the wonder of Easter.  In the power of His resurrection, Christ bought for us the freedom to do the finite jobs set before each of us.  Through the victory of love purchased by the Blood of Christ, the ultimate Glory of God has been ensured.  The work set before us is not to carry the burden of the ultimate success of failure of the gospel of Christ.  For us it is only to offer up what gifts He has given us to his direction.  Every act of love, no matter how small, serves to bring us closer to the ultimate victory over hatred, neglect and violence.

So Happy Easter, everyone.  He is risen.  He is risen indeed. 

Memories of Addis, Part 2

I left Addis as I came to it, in the dead of night.  As I sat waiting for the plane to board, I looked out the towering airport windows into a blackness that was more inviting, more vibrant and less frightening than the one that greeted me upon my arrival. 

After only five days, I was surprised to find that being back in the care of Lufthansa was a little uncomfortable.  Even at that extremity of its influence, I could feel the numbing effect of wealthy Western living begin to creep back over me. After being immersed in the boiling caldron of striving and progress and pain that is Addis, the austere atmosphere of the airport seemed almost oppressively silent.

It was a packed flight, with every seat filled or reserved for someone that would get on in Khartoum.  As will happen when people experience forced proximity, there was an edge of tension as we loaded the plane.  Two men in the rows in front of me got into rows with the flight attendants when they weren’t allowed to change their seats.  It was the end of a long day for everyone, and from each interaction the stewardesses walked away with a look and a headshake that showed they were close to snapping at someone. 

At first I was disgusted to see these petty squabbles break out.  People out there are going to starve to death tonight and here you are fighting about not getting an aisle seat.  I started to feel an unwarranted, self-righteous indignation that we American Evangelicals are so fond of when we think we have really done something wonderful.

During the long hours flying back across the globe, I could not shake the image of the man one row up trying to buy his way into business class on the spot just so he didn’t have to sit near a baby that might start crying.  I kept thinking of a tall German man whose gripe was obviously about leg room.  (Normally a complaint I would understand.)

In the end, what is sticking with me about this experience is not some jaded frustration with Western privilege; the kind that would make me loudly decry those inconsiderate jerks who are whining about luxuries I take for granted too. 

What is sticking with me is that these people were coming from the same country that I was.  Simply being on that flight meant they had spent at least a day in Ethiopia, and probably more.  These people, fighting about airline seats had been surrounded by the same poverty that I had been.  They had seen the same suffering I had.  Or had they?

We as humans have a shocking capacity not to see.  On that plane I was seeing people who appeared to be utterly unaffected by the destitution they had just been surrounded by.  As I sat there, dizzy from the worldview-altering week I had in Addis, I began to feel sad for those people who remained oblivious to the plight of their fellow man despite their proximity to his sufferings.

Really, though, I have no right to judge these people.  The Bible speaks often about God softening or hardening hearts to his purposes.  I would say that He has softened mine to a degree that simple humanistic empathy can not achieve.  I feel privileged that I was allowed to see just a little of the genuine humanity of the Ethiopian people, suffering and all. 

I realize now that my time in Addis was a brief parting of the clouds when the haze of busy Western living was drawn aside for a moment.  In that moment I was able to see people a little more as God sees them.  I saw them as valuable intrinsically, rather than as simply in the way of my happiness. 

The question I ask myself, and God, is how long and how often can I continue to see them that way.

The Pasture

I have remarked on a perception that missions, and the life that follows Christ is a life of mere duty.  As one who suffers regularly from this particular misconception, I am prone to feelings of guilt centered around the feeling that I am “not doing my part.”   

This “not doing my part” notion becomes problematic for me when I consider the work that members of Christ’s church are called to in Scripture.  The work he calls us to appears to be harder, more emotionally wrenching and, let’s face it, not as “fun” as other opportunities life offers. I am often left either feeling guilty that I am shirking responsibility or serving out of fear or obligation.

I submit to you that my understanding of God’s call to action is essentially flawed.  The call of God, whether it be to missions in Africa or to serve those that share my very own roof, is not a call of duty.  It is one of work to be done, and of relationship. 

Rarely, in busy, modern America do we have the chance to engage in work and relationship at the same time.  The concept is antithetical to most of us, with relationships making up what is stuffed in around the “important” things in life.  Things like work. 

Relationships are often viewed as separate form our working lives, frowned upon in corporate culture, or even forbidden explicitly by company policy. (Truth be told, that is often a good thing.)  Relationships are what happen around the coffee maker, or at home, if we can find the time there. 

How then are we to view the “work” asked of us by a God who also allegedly wants a relationship with us? 

I am currently wrestling with a new notion of the work of the Kingdom.  This isn’t Scripture, but it speaks to me.  It is from a poem by Robert Frost called The Pasture.

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long. You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long. You come too.

In this small bit of verse, Frost is offering us a radically different vision of the relationship between work and, well, relationships. These few lines are essentially an invitation.

It is not a request to perform a service, or an invitation to simple social interaction.  It is an invitation to the sort of relationship that can only happen while two people work together. 

I am beginning to believe that this is the essence of Christ’s agrarian exhortation from Luke 10:2. It is not that the work cannot be done without us.  Clearly, an omnipotent God has no need of our services to accomplish His goals.  It is simply that He knows there is a special bond that occurs between those who labor together. 

This, then, is the miracle of serving God.  In a way utterly foreign in our modern lives, He invites us to work along side Him in going about His business; the business of love and life and healing.   

Strange Brew

There are probably many of us here in America that don’t want to stick a toe into the turbulent waters of the mission field because we don't like feeling guilty when we order take-out.  I would have to count myself in that category on more than one occasion.  Sometimes it is easier not to think about it.

For those who may possess that sort of angst, I am happy to report that coming back here and eating American sized meals is not causing me ulcers of remorse and condemnation.  Seeing the quantity of food that was being put down in the restaurants in Ethiopia took the edge off the notion that one more slice of deep-dish pizza is condemning a little, wide-eyed kid to starvation.

I cannot look at a cup of coffee the same way again, however.  I mentioned how glorious each cup tasted in Africa, and how depressing it was to return to imported brew here.  What makes me stop and think is not the flavor.  It is the price. 

In college, my studies brushed on international economics.  I remember trying heroically to stay awake while Professor Pahre droned on about import substitution industrialization and the challenge of basing economic development on raw materials exports.  Now, years later, all I remember is that raw materials are bad, manufactured products are good.  Not exactly earth shattering news. 

Also, not enough to hold the attention of most Americans in this election season.  Who cares about foreign trade when we are struggling out of the sub-prime lending debacle?  After all, in the constricted scope of American foreign policy pursued over the last several administrations, it often appears that in the “zero-sum” game of global interaction the only two options are isolationism and militaristic aggression. 

Stick with me on this…I am about to make a point. 

When I go to Starbucks (which I do on occasion) there are bags and bags of coffee packed into the little displays.  Fortune magazine offers one way to look at the pricing. 

To produce a pound of organic sun-dried coffee, farmers in the southern Ethiopian village of Fero spread six pounds of ripe, red coffee cherries onto pallets near their fields. They sun the fruit for 15 days, stirring every few minutes to ensure uniform dryness, then shuck the shells.

Last season, that pound of coffee fetched farmers an average price of $1.45. Figuring in the cost of generator fuel, bank interest, labor and transport across Ethiopia's dusty roads, it netted them less than $1. In the U.S., however, that same pound of coffee commands a much higher price: $26 for a bag of Starbucks' roasted Shirkina Sun-Dried Sidamo.   

Now, I know that everyone has to make a buck somewhere, and by the time you haul that little pound of beans halfway across the globe, pack it in a little vacuum-sealed, full-color-printed, glossy-coated bag and plunk it in a cool wood and aluminum display, it has racked up a tab for its travels and new set of clothes.  I am not convinced, however, that it is worth the markup. 

In 2006 Starbucks reported $7.8 billion in revenue.  Only $2.4 million of that went back to Ethiopia in the form of investments and loans to help the indigenous coffee industry. Fortune sees it this way:

In a UN ranking of human development, Ethiopia placed 170th out of 177 countries. A recent visit to Fero found most coffee farmers working without shoes. Their clothes were ripped. Most live in mud huts with thatched roofs and subsist on the fruits and vegetables they grow. "We are angry," says Teshome Debigo, a 28-year-old farmer. "But to whom can we cry?"

It would be nice if they could cry to us.  International trade is not zero-sum.  Fair-trade is not just for hippies.

Further reading:

Isaiah 58

CNN Fortune

Memories of Addis, Part 1

As I look back over my journal of the trip, a few images stand out.  None of these is more striking than one from the drive from the airport to the hotel in Addis. 

For me, this introduction to the developing world came as quite a shock.  To begin with, I only had two weeks notice that I would be traveling to Ethiopia, which had not provided me with enough time to really wrap by brain around what I was about to experience. 

When it came to the actual travel, the miracle of modern aviation also prevented me from easing into the experience.  Until I left customs in Ethipoia, the only real indications that I had left the States were what I could see out the plane windows and the fact that the stewardesses on the Lufthansa flights were speaking German in addition to their impeccable English.  (There was also the Lufthansa airport lounge in Frankfurt, which was far too nice to be in an American airport.)

So, ushered away from Colorado in comfort and convenience, I walked out of the Bole International Airport in Addis essentially unprepared for what I was going to see. 

The drive into Addis ran down a divided boulevard lined with what I would later recognize as some of the nicer apartments and shopping centers of Addis.  In the darkness that first night, they were incomprehensible jumbles of stark florescent lighting and concrete interspersed with shaky, corrugated metal fences.  The perpetual, boiling chaos referred to as “traffic” across the developing world had picked us up in its turbulent flow. 

The curbs and sidewalks were crowded with “parked” cars and people standing or walking about.  At intervals I noticed a particularly well dressed young woman standing under a street light or groups of men performing business transactions in a handshake with money passing one way and small items passing the other. 

I was just beginning to wonder whether I was witnessing the prostitution and open drug transactions that I had heard about when I saw a boy in his early teens moving along the sidewalk under a streetlight. 

I wouldn’t have even noticed him if he had been walking.  He was crawling.  He moved along in the same awkward gate you know as the spider-crawl; legs out in front, weight resting heavily on the hands trying to keep pace behind. 

He probably didn’t think of this as the spider-crawl, though.  To this boy, it was just getting around.  One of his legs hung limp in front of him with his deformed right foot dragging along on the pavement.  It was swollen and misshapen, twice the size it should have been.  The foot looked absolutely huge on the end of his emaciated leg. 

As we drove by him, the din of the busy street quieted suddenly and I heard, clearly and distinctly through the open window of the truck, the scraping of rough skin on the concrete.  The sound suggested a thickness and a toughness that surpasses anything that we in the West would ever call a callous.  It was the sound of a lifetime of coping with a broken body, not one day of which was ever spent in a wheelchair or in physical therapy.

I sat bolt upright in the truck and stared straight ahead of me.  Scott turned around and looked at me from the front seat to guage my reaction.  “We can’t help that kid,” he said later, “but we can keep other kids from ending up like that.”

True indeed.  It put the mission and the calling of Christ to help the “least of these” into a new perspective for me.

Doing My Part

After a day back in the States to think things over, the jumbled mix of new images, thoughts and experiences are starting to settle in my head.  The excitement brought by travel is fading.  Trying to convince my body that it really is morning right now is taking more energy than I thought. 

As things settle out in my head, there is one thought that keeps rising to the top of the pile.  I still don’t get it.

Before I left, nearly everyone I know that has been on a mission trip of some kind told me that I was going to be irrevocably changed by the experiences I was to have in Africa.  I suspected they were right, but in true American fashion, I think I was expecting the Hollywood transformation in a 30 second music montage.  This, of course is not how life works. 

If you take a moment to read a selection from Scott Vair’s blog, you will see what it is that I do not yet get.  The statistics on orphaned and abandoned children in Ethiopia alone are staggering.  (No, seriously…go read them.  The rest of this post won’t make sense until you do.)

It is overwhelming to see the numbers on paper.  It is another thing entirely to drive through the pedestrian, taxi and donkey-cart clogged streets of Ethiopia and try to make those numbers attach to what you are seeing. 

Of the people we met, how many had AIDS?  How many of the smiling, laughing kids that we met in the schools still have even one parent alive?  How many people that we saw on the streets walk around with the memories of loss, addiction, abuse and worse? 

The point is not how many people, or which faces that I saw are affected.  The point is that some were, and this continues to haunt me.  It also continues to evade my attempts to really grasp the magnitude of the situation.   

Maybe “getting it” isn’t really the point.  Maybe coming to terms with the scope of the problem isn’t a goal.  After all, I have been trying to do that for years, and all it did was get me so intimidated that I didn’t want to try to help at all.  “What good can I do when there is so much hurt?”  Maybe you have thought the same things yourself. 

For now, I am convinced that it isn’t a matter of “getting it.”  It is a matter of understanding that the problem exists, and asking God what He wants me to do about it.  Chances are, He knows a role that I can fill; one small part to play that I can do, one small part of the burden that I can carry. 

I think that is all He would ask of any of us.  Maybe each of us doing our small part will accomplish more than we could ever ask or imagine. 

Ode to the Bean

My first memories of coffee were of my grandparents spooning Folgers from the can into their cups in the morning, methodically measuring out the same amount every time in a ritual honed over years or decades of practice. 

Later, when I started working a desk job, I was forced to confront the reality that life in modern day America demands coffee.  There is simply no other way to keep ones brain from oozing out into your shoes when you are sitting in the same spot for hours, staring into the blue-white world of your computer. 

I started down the road to a lifetime pseudo-dependency on this dark beverage with a mocha, kind of the gateway drug of the coffee universe. “Don’t worry…it has chocolate in it.  Besides, you can hardly taste the coffee.” 

That last part was a blatant lie, by the way.  I tasted the coffee, and after choking down my first cup, bought anonymously and in nervous haste from Starbucks, I became a coffee drinker, sinking even to the level of holding my hand up eagerly to signal my willingness to gulp down one more cup of caustic, bitter airline brew before we land. 

In Ethiopia this last week, I finally saw the reason the world got addicted to this tooth-staining, breath-fouling beverage.  Coffee doesn’t start out tasting like it does here in America.  There are plenty of places they grow coffee in the world.  Some say that the best coffee comes from the Horn of Africa.  I am inclined to agree. 

During our stay in Ethiopia, Scott, Lameck and I couldn’t go two hours without some coffee being offered to us, or simply brought to us whether we asked for it or not. 

For breakfast every morning it was half-coffee, half-milk accompanying our hotel’s bizarre attempt at a Western style breakfast experience. (more on that later)  At every meeting throughout the day, lunch and even the occasional stop along the road “just because,” we had macchiatos or occasionally straight espresso with sugar. 

It was fabulous.  I have never tasted anything like it.  Nothing in America can compare to the smooth, rich, warm flavor.  The macchiatos made the ones from your local coffee shop seem like a joke in very bad taste. (no pun intended) I think Lameck would have drunk half his body weight in the little glasses of wonderful brew if he had gotten the chance. 

My first day back in the Colorado I went across the street to a bagel shop to snag some wi-fi and throw up a couple blog posts.  Some sadistic voice inside pushed me to order a cup of coffee.  It was awful.  I almost threw up myself. 

As I sat there, looking out at the snowy parking lot and blowing steam off my styrofoam cup of coffee, my thoughts drifted back to Africa.  It is a land where an extra hot, half-caf, soy latte is common as a pair of snowshoes.  For whatever troubles they have in Ethiopia, at least there you can get a decent cup of coffee. 

It's Tough All Over

If there was anything that I discovered on this freshmen trip to the developing world, it is that some things are the same all over.  One of these things is the attitude we take towards the pain that life will inevitably bring.

For those reading this that are Woodmen Valley Chapel regulars, you have probably heard Matt Heard talk about pain avoidance more than once.  For the rest of you, I will provide a brief synopsis. 

The logic goes something like this.  Life is going to hand us painful experiences at some point. In those moments of pain, we must decide whether we are going to simply deaden the pain with the numbing effect of drugs, alcohol, sex, sports, work, movies, play, etc., or if we are going to grapple with the problematic notion that God loves us and yet something awful has just happened. 

What the Gospel promises is an answer that is larger than our circumstances if we are willing to look beyond our present pain and see a larger picture, or at least trust in the character of the author of a larger story who has written an ending that we cannot yet see or understand. 

It was a surprise for me to find that this message is just as salient in Africa, as it is here in the busy, comfort saturated West. 

Talking with Habtamu, our guide, I gave him the Cliff Notes version of this to see what he would think.  He just put his hands up and started humming.  I thought I was going to get an “amen” or two out of it. 

It turns out that it doesn’t matter if you are living in a hut made of sticks and mud or if you are living in a five-bedroom ranch house with a great mountain view.  There is still pain that only the Gospel can fix.  Out of the thousands of people we saw walking the roads of Ethiopia, we saw two fall over flat into the dirt.  “Drunk…” muttered Eyob as he drove past, unconcerned. 

After much conversation on this topic, I have come to believe that the point of the missions World Orphans and others are undertaking is not simply improving the quality of life.  Suicide and divorce rates among industrialized nations should be enough to show that money and education will never be sufficient ways to improve the essential human condition.  All they do is offer less dangerous more engaging ways to numb the pain of loss and disappointment that we all experience at one time or another. 

The point of Christian missions (as differentiated by that of secular NGOs) is to offer the singularly unique message of the Gospel of Christ.  It is to offer the truth that God’s love for each of us does not depend on our circumstances or our bank accounts.   

It is also true that His love does not build houses on its own.  His love does not magically produce anti-retroviral drugs to keep parents with AIDS alive longer.  It doesn’t magically provide clean water to drink.  We can provide all of these things.  Its our job.  He provides the one thing we cannot; a reason to live in the first place.

There and Back Again

I am told that the planning put into trips to Africa is only really worthwhile until you get there.  After that, you just hold on and hope things work out in the end. 

My stay in Ethiopia turns out not to have been exceptional in this regard.  Our best attempts to acquire a visa into Sudan failed.  Even the back-channel attempts of a "trusted" man inside proved to be all for naught.  When the plane left Bole International in Addis, I was not on it.  Scott's attempts to find my visa that was supposedly "issued but not printed" that day also proved fruitless. 

Lameck stayed behind in Addis with me to see another church project that our hosts were keen on us visiting.  The project turned out to be more than 250 km out of Addis, and given the multi-use attitude towards paved roads in Africa, that turned out to be a considerable distance.  By the time I was back in Addis that night we had spent more than eight hours on the road for a 45 minute meeting.  It was completely worth it.

When we finally gave up the quest for the visa, Scott found me a flight home Monday night.  (More on that process in a later post)  We barely made it back to Addis in time for a hasty good-bye to Habtamu and Eyob at the airport.  After a hasty dash through customs, I squeezed into my seat for the red-eye to Frankfurt.  The first leg to Khartoum was alright, but after we took off for Europe in earnest, I fell into a fitful sleep, thanks in large part to the earplugs and little sleep mask thing, compliments of Lufthansa.

I woke up with the lights of southern Europe sliding by outside in the pre-dawn blackness.   My first visit to  Africa was officially over.  Ahead of me was a morning stroll through snow flurries in Frankfurt while I waited for my connection, and ten long hours to mull the last week over as we grazed the Arctic circle on our way back to Denver.

I say "first" trip to Africa because I certainly do hope that I will return.  In the Evangelical Christian circles, it seems like a rite of passage to have been there once.  To want (or have the opportunity) to go back is another matter. 

What draws me back is not the drama and excitement of trying to get things done in the developing world. (although we certainly had our share)  It is not the pseudo-mystical energy that people sometimes report feeling in Africa.  It is relationships and possibility.

That relationships would draw me back there is not surprising.  The warmth and genuine openness of the people we met and interacted with was legendary.  Beyond the individuals we met, there is the possibility of what could someday be Africa. 

More on that later.  It was a long flight back, and I think I left my circadian rhythm somewhere in Frankfurt.