I'm a spurt-er. I don't know if this is a real word, but I'm going to use it. A spurt of gardening, a spurt of cooking, a spurt of hobbies, a spurt of events, a cleaning spurt, a spurt of political activism, a spurt of silence, a spurt of social media wham-bam! I live in spurts.
I don't really like this about myself. I've been wrestling with God for most of my adult life about why He didn't form me with a personality of consistency, faithfulness, and reliable ness. My husband is a plodder - a complete antonym to my spurting - and I envy it sometimes.
If you're reading this, chances are you are my fb friend and you've seen the recent posting spurt I've been going through. I'd like to explain, just beyond my propensity towards general spurting, why this came about.
1. I'm reading the Simplicity chapter from John Foster's Spiritual Discipline book. In it, he challenges us to realize everything we have is a gift from God and as such should be held loosely and be subject to being given away, used by others, or taken away by the One who gave it. Often, the obsession of owning things keeps us from our great calling of seeking FIRST the Kingdom of God and working on behalf of those who have less. Contrary to popular Christian sentiment, Jesus speaks about riches and the poor all the freak'en time and calls us to put riches in right perspective. It is not the social gospel to stop giving weight to materialistic possession, to give what we have to others even to the point of feeling our own need, which God will meet, it IS actually the teachings of Christ Himself. (Matt 6:19, Luke 6:24, Luke 18:22, I Tim. 6:7-8, Philippians 4:11-12).
2. Our last Sunday school lesson delved into the message of justice. We started in Micah 6:8, God has shown us what is good - to do justice. And what is justice? Helping those without a voice (the marginalized) be treated rightly. You know, people like the poor and foreigners (Jer. 22:3-5, Is. 10:1-3, Prov. 14:31 & 19:17, Lev. 19:15, Ex. 22:21 & 23:7, Lam. 3:34-36, Amos 5:11, James 5:1-6).
3. I saw the movie "Kill the Messenger" which is based on a true and sad story of truth being squelched by both media and government and simultaneously ignored by a mass of public who just didn't care about people who weren't like them. People who were marginalized. People who were "them" and not "us".
4. The brief snippets of news I've consumed (and I'm not very newsy, I don't own a television, have internet at home, or get the paper) about the upcoming elections hit some sort of internal overflow valve. Suddenly, I was complete sick and tired of having to choose between two evils in the political spectrum. For instance, in our current Dallas District Attorney race, I can choose between a man who has freed many wrongly imprisoned people, but who also used his position in an unethical way for personal gain, or a woman who thinks the number of people you throw into prison is a measure of success (apparently, it doesn't matter if they were innocent or not). Or all the messages telling me I'm not being represented if someone with a different skin color is in office (because, of course, someone with different skin couldn't possible have the same ideals or value system as I do. WHAT?!) Or, of course, I should vote because I'm more concerned about whether someone voted for Obama than what their current policy is are regarding immigration. Where is the freak'en logic??
5. Some voices in my life reached a crescendo I could no longer ignore. Voices that testify to wrongs and injustices and absurdities now taken for granted by the world around me. Voices like the nurse going to Africa to help in the largely ignored Ebola crisis over there (as opposed to the infatuation of the Ebola non-crisis over here). Voices like the friend trying to get food banks to stop requiring photo-id. Or voices like Nabila Rehman. Or my friend who has experienced racial profiling and misuse of authority because of her skin color and somehow manages not to curl up in a fetal position from hearing about people every.single.day still experiencing this. Or my own voice, from the times I've personally witnessed injustice against those in a lower socio-economic status.
Sometimes, all the little actions I take everyday and the right attitudes I strive to have don't seem to be enough. So I went on a blitz. A spurting blitz. Not just my own posting, but I followed the ebola hashtag and posted on the ridiculous status updates from about 10 republican congressmen. But chances are, next week I'll get caught up in the baby's impending arrival or the myriad of home improvement projects facing us and I'll peter out. I know myself. It kind of makes me sad. But then, on some level, whether it is simply to assuage my own conscience or a real boost of courage to do more, I'll know that at least I did something. I realize this is hypocrisy: I blasted Jen Hatmaker in her new book for doing just enough to assuage her white-rich-person guilt complex and not enough to really make a difference. And yet, here I am doing the same thing. My apologies to you, Jen. :(
A line from a Delirious song rings in my head, "I tried to save the world and it fell upon my shoulders."
Even while I type this, my sister is in the ER with her husband, to see if they will put him in the ICU and give him a 5th treatment of anti-venom since his blood still isn't clotting after two weeks of being released from the hospital from his rattlesnake bite. And his brother's wife is just getting out of a three hour spinal cord surgery to remove a mass, and we're waiting to hear about the length and difficulty of her rehab (both my sister and her sister-in-law have multiple small children). So there's a part of me that says, REALLY, SJ? And you think it matters who gets elected District Attorney??
But it matters to the innocent person languishing in jail. Or the person getting frisked without probable cause (wait, you don't think that's a big deal, hold still, let me get some guy to run his hands over your body). Travel restrictions matter to the person in Liberia whose been waiting months to see his family in the U.S. Drone strikes matter to the little Syrian girl who watched her grandmother die. And the requirement for a social security card matters to the homeless person trying to go to a food bank and being turned away for not providing an astounding number of documents, documents which would be very difficult to keep safe on the streets. It matters to the hospital losing money because two nurses brave enough to treat a disease we've never dealt with before got sick. Um, wait, let me repeat. Two. Like, two dollars, two m&m's, two cars, two fingers, two cups of water. Wait. Two isn't a really big number is it? No, not.at.all. It matters to the thirteen year old girl traveling hundreds of miles on foot because drug gangs killed her brother in Guatemala and, oh, she just didn't feel like becoming their prostitute. It matters to the baby who wants to live but whose own mother plans to kill it.
The truth is LOTS of things matter. And no Christ-follower can just ignore that. To make a difference, you first have to know where God wants you to move. In some areas, He call you to leave it alone, for others, and in some cases to jump in and struggle. Drawing near to Him is the only hope of having a true heading. I'm trying not to drown in the wrong sea. And I desperately hope that I'm not just sunbathing on the shoreline.
A line from a Delirious song rings in my head, "I tried to save the world and it fell upon my shoulders."
Even while I type this, my sister is in the ER with her husband, to see if they will put him in the ICU and give him a 5th treatment of anti-venom since his blood still isn't clotting after two weeks of being released from the hospital from his rattlesnake bite. And his brother's wife is just getting out of a three hour spinal cord surgery to remove a mass, and we're waiting to hear about the length and difficulty of her rehab (both my sister and her sister-in-law have multiple small children). So there's a part of me that says, REALLY, SJ? And you think it matters who gets elected District Attorney??
But it matters to the innocent person languishing in jail. Or the person getting frisked without probable cause (wait, you don't think that's a big deal, hold still, let me get some guy to run his hands over your body). Travel restrictions matter to the person in Liberia whose been waiting months to see his family in the U.S. Drone strikes matter to the little Syrian girl who watched her grandmother die. And the requirement for a social security card matters to the homeless person trying to go to a food bank and being turned away for not providing an astounding number of documents, documents which would be very difficult to keep safe on the streets. It matters to the hospital losing money because two nurses brave enough to treat a disease we've never dealt with before got sick. Um, wait, let me repeat. Two. Like, two dollars, two m&m's, two cars, two fingers, two cups of water. Wait. Two isn't a really big number is it? No, not.at.all. It matters to the thirteen year old girl traveling hundreds of miles on foot because drug gangs killed her brother in Guatemala and, oh, she just didn't feel like becoming their prostitute. It matters to the baby who wants to live but whose own mother plans to kill it.
The truth is LOTS of things matter. And no Christ-follower can just ignore that. To make a difference, you first have to know where God wants you to move. In some areas, He call you to leave it alone, for others, and in some cases to jump in and struggle. Drawing near to Him is the only hope of having a true heading. I'm trying not to drown in the wrong sea. And I desperately hope that I'm not just sunbathing on the shoreline.
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