Pictorial Prayer - 04.19.2010

Hope Alive! has 3 sites in Uganda – Kampala (the capital city where I live), Gulu (Northern Uganda), and Masaka (Southwestern Uganda; pictured above). I am in the process of figuring out how to best help our Hope Alive! kids who live outside Kampala (what we call “up- country”) when they have medical problems, especially because the medical facilities in these places are often poor and the distance to travel there is far.

Tomorrow I will be traveling to Masaka to see Frank, a 6-year old boy who is sick and has been diagnosed with kidney problems.

Please pray not only for little Frank’s health but also for wisdom to know the best way to get medical help to our “up-county” kids.

inertia

inertia |iˈnər sh ə|

noun

1 a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.

2 Physics a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.

I went on a retreat last month where the each person in the group was asked to write down and discuss his/her "life goals." We were asked, "do you know what your 10 year plan is?" At this, I sort of guffawed. 10 years? Shoot, I start feeling anxious when I think 1 year down the road.

I don't think I'm alone in this...I actually think this is a "virus" of my generation; you know, the general reluctance to commit to something permanently, reticence to communicate true heart-felt desires, and anxiety to say, out loud, what kind of a person I want to be.

While we long for recognition as unique and special we often freeze in inactivity (or rote routine) for fear that we might fall (fail, yes, but also fall - fall from the good graces of our parents, from popularity, from wealth and success, from comfort...fall and hit the ground hard.).

My own plan-phobia is summed up pretty well by this quote:

Am I to be praised for my stickability or criticized for my lack of ingenuity? -Alistair Begg

Too often, I'll admit, that when faced with a big decision, I'd rather just sit on my couch and do...nothing.

The storm is coming but I don't mind

People are dying, I close my blinds

All that I know is I'm breathing now

I want to change the world

Instead I sleep

I want to believe in more than you and me

But all that I know is I'm breathing

All I can do is keep breathing

All we can do is keep breathing now

-Ingrid Michaelson (lyrics from "Keep Breathing")

Hmm, that sounds familiar. Maybe it's not just me.

grounded

So why this aversion to having a plan, a commitment, a vision for my life? Possibly: fear, laziness, status-quo, boredom...

Deeper though... I think my own reason has more to do with Guilt and Fear.

Guilt: that if I commit to this plan for my life than I will have to say No to all those people and possibilities that may ask for my attention.

Fear: that if I tell you who it is I want to be, I will have many fingers pointing in my direction if I fail. I become accountable (oh how awful for you, I say sarcastically to myself).

flight plan

I was listening to this message by Rob Bell and he was talking about the way Jesus lived his life, in total devotion and commitment to his one goal - fulfilling the will of God through his death on the cross. Because Jesus had a compass and orientation for his life he was able to say No to things and people, even when they were good things and legitimate needs. Bell says,

Jesus is willing to go against the expectations of the crowd in order to be true to the few things he is pursuing. He doesn't let what everybody wants direct his path...Jesus says no because he's already said Yes...You can't say No until you've already said Yes to something else.

I've been thinking on that idea a lot lately and how radically freeing that can be for life. Where I live in Uganda, needs are bottomless and opportunity to help and do good are endless; I tend to either feel overwhelmed by the their immensity or frenzied as though I must give myself in every direction.

When I look at the truth though...I see that I am God's child and He has given me a vision for my life. I can let out my pent-up breath knowing that if I continue to say Yes to what God has called me to, I can say No guiltlessly to what does not align with that vision.

Soren Kierkegaard said,

A saint is the person who can will the one thing.

flying

Someone gave me this example:

When a plane is flying at its high cruising speed and altitude it only takes slight adjustments of its ailerons, elevators, and rudder to change the entire direction of the aircraft.

At lower speeds bigger adjustments must be made to affect the course of the plane.

On the ground with the engines off, it will take a crane to move that plane an inch.

Of course we are not mere machines; we are thinking, breathing, feeling humans with spirits and souls, but the analogy is clear. If I sit in my corner and wait for a shining light and booming voice from heaven it will be much harder for me begin making those decisions to trust and serve God. When I begin moving and doing and serving (even if I'm not 100% sure what the next 10 steps will be) it suddenly becomes easier to be attuned and obedient to God 's leading.

But isn't our tendency toward inertia just amazing?

turbulence

So how do I decide what that "one thing" should be?

In his book "Crazy Love," Francis Chan says,

Most of our thoughts are centered on the money we want to make, the school we want to attend, the body we aspire to have, the spouse we want to marry, the kind of person we want to become... But, the fact is that nothing should concern us more than our relationship with God; it's about eternity, and nothing compares with that. God is not someone who can be tacked on to our lives.

I am convicted but encouraged at the same time. Over and over I circle back to this point - that I must first say Yes to God in my life; He is my primary allegiance. Of course God cares about things like jobs, school, spouses, and exercise...so long as they don't eclipse His own centrality, He may even want us to say yes to these things in our lives. I think with practice it becomes easier to recognize the goals and aspirations that fit with what it means to say Yes to God in your own life (without the fear of comparison - "but that's not what it looks like for so-and-so").

landing

Now for the scary part...what did I come up with? Do I have that vision for my life?

It's a work in progress, but I have a draft and, quite honestly, I'm vacillating whether I want to share it...to speak it out loud, for you to hear, and openly compare to the actuality of my living...

So I will, for this reason - imagine if we could all share in honesty our vision, who we want to be, what we want our lives to be characterized by...it certainly carries an accountability most of us don't want, but also a freedom; for me to live in my calling (and not yours) and to forgive you because we are both made of the same fallible material but reaching for eternity.

So here is what I wrote for my life, my vision:

I want to be a person whose life is

Characterized by: the same prodigal love GOD has shown me, and

Driven by: a desire to see GOD glorified.

May I be:

radical, never stagnant

proactive, not reactive

flexible, never rigid

lovable, not self-sufficient

courageous, never fearful

teachable, not arrogant

peaceable, never divisive

open, not self-righteous

selfless, giving all I have and am for the Glory of God.

So from my friend, Rob Bell,

May you have "the pursuit of a simple disciplined focused life in which you pursue the few things which God has for you and may you be like Jesus, able to say No because you already said Yes."

Pictorial Prayer - 04.07.2010

please pray for Rwanda (Uganda’s neighbor to the South). Today, April 7^th, marks the anniversary day of the genocide that took place in the country in 1994 during which time it is estimated close to 1 million people were killed. Rwandans will be going days of mourning for the victims of the genocide.

This man shown above survived the genocide as a young boy but now lives without most of his family. Emotional, psychological, and spiritual scars and trauma are deep for Rwandans of all ages.

Please pray with the Rwandan church that Christ will be the Hope of Rwanda; that God’s power that raised Christ from the dead will enable each believer in Rwanda to bring Hope to the people of their country.

Martha, Epicurus, and Jack

Occasionally my postings come with forewarnings to the willing reader; today is one of those times. Here are your warnings, three of them:

1.) I might offend you.

You might be Baptist, Catholic, Christian, Bahá'í, Atheist, or just a free-thinking-free-spirit. That’s fine, but I’m not promising to make any of you happy, as often happens when God becomes the conversation centerpiece. What’s more, I’m not even sure I’ll be happy when I’m done. But let’s just see, shall we?

2.) I might come out sounding radical, fanatical, or just downright heretical. My intent is not blasphemy but rather a desire to look at what I’ve always believed about God in a new way, without taking those beliefs for granted.

3.) If you stick with me, you’re going to be reading a lot of quotes.

We’ll begin.

I have one good friend who is an Atheist and another good friend who is a Christian and pretty fanatical about C.S. Lewis. So, I’ve started a project, you see, looking at my faith from these bipolar angles: I’m watching a BBC documentary series by Jonathan Miller called “A Rough History of Disbelief: Atheism” and concurrently reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

I’m taking notes.

I know, if you’re still reading you’re thinking that this all sounds rather heady and is getting a good running start towards boring. Maybe. I would probably think the same, but then, somewhere in the midst of my BBC series and my 30 cent copy of Mere Christianity, my life smacked right into this ponderous philosophy.

Let me tell you how, not so that you can feel pity, but so that you can connect with me with the common chords we all share as human beings, those of pain, sadness, and suffering.

You might remember a while back when I worked at a hospital here in Kampala for a month? The week I worked in the pediatric ward I became friends with a mother and her 2 ½ month old baby, Martha Patience. In the middle of ward busy with sick and crying babies Martha caught my attention precisely because she was a beautiful and healthy-looking baby with a caring and attentive mother who never left her side – the sadly rare exception to most of the children there. Martha had been having breathing problems since her birth and had just been diagnosed with a heart defect. Without surgery (a procedure which would be “simple” in the US) her prognosis would be poor. But, cardiac surgery isn’t done here in Uganda, especially for small babies.

I told her mother I wanted to help. I researched organizations that fly children to the US for advanced surgeries. I emailed cardiologists. And then, about 2 ½ weeks after I met her, Martha died.

It felt like getting punched in the stomach. Having the wind knocked out of you. Not that I was the savior for the situation, but the fact that help was out there for Martha, if only God had given her more time.

I was back at that age-old question of “why would a good and all-powerful God (if he really exists) allow suffering?” I searched the Bible, prayed, and journaled.

This is what I came up with:

God is all-powerful (“The Lord…he is mighty to save” Zeph 3:17)

God is willing to save (“The Lord is…not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” 2 Pet. 3:9)

I’ll share what I wrote in my journal:

“Lord, if it is not your lack of power to save or your willingness to save, them I am back to where I began…that it must be your PURPOSE that I do not understand…”

What does my experience have to do with philosophy, atheism and C.S. Lewis?

Let me take you back to the 4^th century to meet Epicurus - materialist, empiricist, hedonist, and one of the major philosophers of the Hellenistic period.

Epicurus asked this question about God and Evil:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?

Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?

Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?

Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?

Then why call him God?”

I guess I was rather shocked I had been asking the same questions as Epicurus…only because he assumes he must be on the same moral, intellectual, and spiritual level as God he stops short of a third possibility – that God (as GOD!) may have a purpose even higher than his ability or willingness that we as HUMANS cannot grasp.

Here’s what C.S. Lewis has to say in his book Mere Christianity:

“Is this state of affairs in accordance with God’s will or not? If it is, He is a strange God, you will say; and if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power?” (M.C. p.52)

So far, it seems the philosophers agree. More from Lewis:

“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right…Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata – of creatures that worked like machines would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk…

…If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will – that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good and real harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls strings – then we may take it, it is worth paying.” (M.C. p.52-53)

Worth paying. Cancer. Genocide. Child trafficking. Poverty. Worth paying??? Just how can you say that the destruction of lives, peoples, cultures, nations are ever worth it?

You cannot….unless…you are able to think outside the world and ourselves as we understand it…as humans.

What if, just what if …it was worth it?

Could it be that goodness, joy, love, and freedom possible because of free will is just that precious?

Could it be that God’s love allows cancer, genocide, child trafficking, and poverty as the required price for free will?

…and all this because only He could possibly know the reality of a world without free will? Could it be that the culmination of human suffering breaks God’s heart, but that He knows a life without free will would mean either the absence of, or counterfeit goodness, joy, love, and freedom?

I am only asking questions…I don’t pretend to have figured out the answers.

Seen collectively, this costly price might be understandable for the whole of humanity…on an individual level, I struggle because what if I am that person with the caner, or that one child sold into slavery, that one woman condemned to a life of poverty, that baby named Martha? What does this say of God’s love for me, as ME?

But the truth is, the human race has in fact, “set up on their own as if they had created themselves – (to) be their own masters – invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery – the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” (M.C. p 53 – 54)

At some level, to dis-allow or intervene in the pain and suffering of one individual would at the same moment be taking away the free will of another person…right?

And that's all I have. No happy ending stories or great answers, just lots of questions and a big want to understand more.

References:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzlB7lJZH-g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxJwSIIqQrU

Faces of Gulu, Uganda

Some of beautiful people I met on a recent trip to Gulu (Northern Uganda)

To see the complete album visit:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2087177&id=68603237&l=4fb1b26133

Pictorial Prayer - 03.21.2010

please pray for Raymond (top) and Alfred (bottom). These two young men both have the dream of going to nursing school, then going on to become doctors for the people of their country. They both have interviews to get into nursing school on Monday.

Pictorial Prayer - 03.15.2010

please pray for Dorothy, one of the Hope Alive! mentors. Dorothy mentors several children who live near her in a slum neighborhood. She has a huge heart and a special gift for working with kids and they really love her, too. At home, she also cares for her elderly aunt who is ill with TB and AIDS. She would like to go back to school to study in the healthcare profession at the university level but has been unable to due to finances and her home situation.