Quote of the Day

Thank you Sojourners Daily Verse and Voice for this insight today:

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we as Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined.”

- Søren Kierkegaard,
Danish philosopher, theologian, and ethicist (1813-1855)

Madness

We lack a holy rage – The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets… a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world… To rage when little children must die of hunger when the tables of the rich are sagging with food… To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God.

-Kaj Munk (quoted in Irresistible Revolution)

I’m angry. I’m mad as hell.

A month ago I walked into a hospital and saw a child named after a biblical angel, his name means ‘God heals’ in Hebrew. The child has as a mild but rare genetic syndrome. In all my inexperience I thought there was no way I was right. 5000 miles from my American ivory tower surely I couldn’t diagnose a disease that most pediatricians have never seen as a 4th year medical student with incomplete history and hap-hazarded physical exam. But if I was right, there was a problem. This child could go blind. I had seen children who had gone blind from similar eye diseases in Romania before. Its horrible, ugly and senseless because its treatable. I begged the staff to let me take him to get his eyes examined they told me I was wrong and that he was perfect except for a clef palate.

But they let me take his picture because he looked like me. So I carried the picture in my suitcase home to the ivory tower where I sent it to the expert, my mentor. She e-mailed and with great pride told me I was exactly right. The kid had the diagnosis I thought all along and could go blind at any time without careful follow up. He is of normal intelligent once he gets his clef palate fixed he is adoption potential but if he goes blind or his eyes never get the chance to see through glasses below the age of three to five and he is severely visually impaired he will get sent to some God forsaken institution to rot. I’ve seen it before but never have in a child so young, never where I could still prevent it. Do you know how maddening it is to know that you have the knowledge to save a child’s life but no one in the child’s world believes you? Or no one in the child’s world cares because he is different and therefore cursed? (more likely)

I’m angry. I’m mad as hell. Because I live in a world filled with the resources to save this child and so many others but my world chooses indifference, my world chooses not to be angry but to be numb. Numb to the pain, blind to suffering.

But God is a God who heals…as this little boy’s name keeps saying again and again in the darkness where he lives.  ‘God heals’ ‘God heals’

We make a choice every day. To be angry, to be angry and fight through pain because ‘God heals’ and he wants to heal our world, to build the kingdom,  if we will embrace the hurting.

Or we can choose to be blind.

I know what I would choose for this child and for myself .  That’s why I’m mad as hell.

Navel Gazing

Lately I’ve been struggling to put into words the things that have been gnawing at the back of my mind, and bothering me. I find myself wrestling with pride, with arrogance, with self-entitlement and all of the attitudes that come with them.
There are things I feel strongly called to do, beliefs to which I hold dear, and insights I believe are unique and engaging. My struggle, however, is that when given voice, I feel utterly inadequate and ignored. I’m tempted to label my gifts and the desire to use them as pride. I’m tempted to hide my beliefs because of their perceived “threat” to the body of Christ. And I’m tempted to believe that my insights fall on dead ears, heard only by the few who choose to listen, and thus, am tempted to stop sharing.

But worst than any of this… I’m tempted to make this about me.

As I read back over that introduction, I cringe. Because really… it isn’t about me at all. Oh how I need to learn that lesson… to step back, to stand back, and to allow God to work in me, no matter how much I think he should work in this way, or he should do this, I need to get out of the way. Too often, I catch myself navel gazing and wishing I could be asked to do this, or wishing I’d get the respect I feel I deserve… when in reality? I deserve nothing. I am nothing.

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Phillipians 3:7-8

Food for Thought

Every time we sit at a table … to enjoy the fruits and grain and vegetables from our good earth, remember that they come from the work of men and women and children who have been exploited for generations.

- Cesar Chavez, Mexican-American Farm Worker and civil rights activist