So right now I am kind of wrestling. Wrestling with what it means for me to be radical, to really follow when Jesus hits home at the comfortable complacency that I so easily fall into and He says, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." {Matthew 19:21, spoken to a rich young ruler}
It's really easy for me, in this blessed and cushy life with a wonderful family and lots of STUFF, to push this notion aside when it gets uncomfortable. I mean, even cleaning my room would involve monumental amounts of work, much less selling it all. And seriously, that would ruin me, right?!
But it doesn't help that my friend Jeremy Harris has asked me to pray for his team on their World Race trip, an adventure all about rejecting the American Dream and spending 11 months travelling to some of the most destitute, desperate, dusy, and poverty-plagued countries in the world as they continually pour out of themselves whatever the Holy Spirit continually fills them with.
It also doesn't help that I've started reading this book that a friend lent me, "The Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claiborne. This guy is so intense... I am both hungering to eat it up voraciously as I find descriptions of myself on every page, and yet desperate to stop, digest, and get away from the intensity of this radical life he calls us to... the radical life Jesus calls us to. But this kind of abandon that he describes is the kind of thing I only dream in my wildest moments. Could it happen someday? I doubt it most of the time, but I still always hope somewhere in the back of my head...
This book has been so convicting already. Just the foreword nailed me to my chair for awhile.
"Don't let the world steal your soul," he quotes a college prof., "Being a Christian is about choosing Jesus and deciding to do something incredibly daring with your life."
I want to be known as daring.
Recently, I'll admit, I have become disillusioned and cynical about church. Oh, no, you'd never know it on the outside, and most of the time I would not let it dominate my thinking... but occasionally, in the corners of my mind, it would creep back in. I hated this "conservative vs. liberal" and the "traditional vs. contemporary" and all the "let's go reach our neighbors" without actually leaving the church doors... despite the good things there were in the church, I was stubbornly focused on the bad.
But I wasn't doing anything about it.
This book insists that we don't stop there, that there is a band of Believers rising up and not staying silent. "But there is another movement stirring, a little revolution of sorts. Many of us are refusing to allow distorted images of our faith to define us..... There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of."
Wow. But "Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived."
Zing. True again. And me again. His description got eerily close when, moving on from the discontent with the strict division/obsession with "conservative and liberal" and the disillusionment with aspects of the church, he described a state he was in as "Spiritual Bulimia." Just as bulimia is a disease in which folks "consume large amounts of food but vomit it up before it has a chance to digest", Claiborne--and myself, many times--"did my devotions, read all the new Christian books and saw Christian movies, nad then vomited up information... but it never had the chance to digest. I had gorged myself on all the products of the Christian industrial complex but was spiritually starving to death. I was marked by an overconsumptive but malnourished spirituality, suffocated by Christianity but thirsty for God." While I might not say that I have reached a state of "suffocation", I was headed the same way and I know *exactly* what he means by gorging and spitting out without digesting.
So to read the blog posts from World Racers, and to have this book with me about an ordinary radical revolution... I am wrestling with what that means for me. My heart cries out for children around the world. A tiny piece of me wonders what it would be like to abandon all and visit a faraway place, just as Shane visited Calcutta and Jeremy is all over the country. And all at once I am struck with the desire to go and work and help heal, but it all strikes me at once and the feeling is really overwhelming. How can I really make a difference? I cannot help out ALL the widows, orphans, poverty-stricken, dying, destitute, and afflicted. But I did know one thing I could do, one thing I had already started.
But before that, here's this, something I wrote as I was feeling all these things:
::Radically Small::
And it's sitting here
once again
I start to feel small.
Wondering
how my own hand
can shape the world at all.
and all at once
it becomes so overwhelming
and I cry as if I
am to try
to do it all by my
very self. Alone
no help.
The world needs so much, Jesus,
all the broken people
in the broken situations
in their broken habitats
this broken world.
How can I reach the widows,
the orphaned boys and girls,
my neighbors in their shiny new homes,
and those downtown who do not know
what it is to be safe, fed, and loved?
But it's not my strength,
answers come from up above
I may be small,
inconsequential,
tiny,
but I know that I need
the Lord to stand by me
on my own I can't see
how the prisoners fly free
but in Jesus chains are broken,
whether you're a business man
in a three piece suit
or an orphan in Uganda
just praying for food
and He uses His WHOLE Body
not individuals
not republicans or liberals
but radicals.
Ordinary radicals,
everyday world-changers.
The burden is not on just one
because One
already bore our burden.
Let Him shape your view
change what you do
He still means what He says
take Him seriously
live it furiously
let justice flow
let it go, don't slow,
taking peace
to the world
that's beyond what they know
not a meal and a show
but a real and sure
and proven embrace
love that changes our fates.
And sitting here,
feel the smallness
let it move your faith
really shake you
because you CAN'T change the world,
but God already IS
and He
is inviting
you
to join Him.
-------all right-------
I was trying to decide earlier today if I am going to move to Genesis tomorrow in my reading or Acts, but after all I've seen this afternoon/evening, I am pretty positive Acts is my next destination for sure. THAT's the radical church the way it originally went, man!
Here's that last thing. Something I've been wanting to do for awhile, my own tiny bit of "craziness" in this routine world, my way to reach out to the other side of the world. A child, a dear, precious child... I may not be able to go around the world right now to work with children, but I can sponsor with the new financial gains God has given me at my job. What better way to start giving back for justice in a tangible way?
This is my child. Her name is Mame, and she is from Ghana, and she is 5 years old (that means she would be in my Kindergarten Sparky room in AWANA on Wednesday nights if she lived here). I am waiting for my first packet in the mail from Compassion so I can start writing her letters, but already when I pray for her I feel this burden as she is really mine. I can't wait to tell her how beautiful she is and how much I love her and what great things she'll one day do because of Jesus. I am going to put this picture of her in my office, and on my dresser, and maybe even in my wallet:
Isn't she just the most beautiful girl?
Here's to the tiny start of an ordinary-radical life :-)
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