It may be time again to talk about Under Construction with all this talk about the “value” of different ministries and concern about pitting one against another in terms of importance. I am not sure people get it. What is it about?
To be sure, it is about giving beds to poor kids who are sleeping on the floor. We dealt with this early on. We felt this was an injustice. We felt like God is about correcting injustice and uses attentive, obedient followers to correct them. We felt like we should build them some beds. Why? Because we can and because it seems like the right thing to do.
If this were all UC was about, I think it would be enough, but UC is also about other things. One of those is practice in spiritual formation (the process of becoming like Jesus). In UC, we are tackling issues of our hearts, compassion, and sensing the presence and leading of the Spirit. To be sure, there are many other things that could and should be done around spiritual formation. What we are doing is not necessarily better than other things, it is just a process. One that, at this point, seems like a pretty good one. So, why are we doing this thing? Why go to the poorest of the poor? Answer: Because we are lazy and it is easy.
Let me explain that answer through my own experience. About 3-4 years ago, God essentially showed me my heart. I was not a compassionate person. I felt challenged with “What are you going to do about it?” It was at that time that I began to pay attention for opportunities to practice compassion. Given the definition of compassion, you have to address suffering.
Now, if you were not compassionate and you wanted to work on trying to develop and cultivate compassion, what would you do? Where would you go? What I did was to go sleep out with the homeless. I figured that they were at the bottom of the social hierarchy and maybe I could learn something from that experience. The process here would be to start off doing something that would be relatively easy and make it work there first. If you can't make it work in the easy situation, what hope do you have in a difficult situation?
It is the same principle I use in my work. A family comes to see me because their kid’s behavior is out of control. When I teach them some skills, should I send them to Walmart to practice? Not if I want them to have any success! If they can’t make it work in the controlled environment of my clinic, they have little hope of making it work in Walmart. We will deal with Walmart later, after we have success in other situations.
Back to UC. In our society, what situations would be easiest to develop compassion? There are probably many, but dirt poor kids sleeping on a cold floor in the winter is one of them. If that injustice is not enough to move our hearts, what would be? I suppose that there are even more pathetic situations. Maybe we should reach out to poor kids with no arms and legs? My point is that this is a starting point. Let’s make it work in this easy situation. If we feel little, great! At least we know where our hearts are at. Let’s look into the eyes of the poor and the weak and ask God to show us how he sees them. Let’s ask for grace to see them the same way He does. Let’s feel what God feels. Let’s try and love them like God loves them. Let's learn to speak words of life and light to them like Jesus did. Let’s get to the point where or feelings motivate us to alleviate their suffering. If we can’t love the poor, innocent kids sleeping on the cold floor, how are we ever going to love the person who hates us?
I know this raises lots of questions. Most of my posts over the past several years are my way of working through the questions and searching for some answers.
More can be said about this, but later. What are your questions and thoughts?
3 comments:
How do you find these people, and is it difficult to find them?
That's part of the problem and part of the process. It is part of the problem because we live our lives in a way where we do not cross paths with the poor, or at least not is a way where we are aware of it.
It is part of the process in that we had to ask ourselves: How can we become the kind of people where we do come across the poor and needy.
That might mean we go across town. We might start talking to people and organizations that work with the needy. Most of the families we work with are referred to us by people and agencies that know what we do because we went and talked with them.
I wouldn't say it is difficult, but you do have to be intentional and step out.
Thats pretty cool...is there a lot of needy families where you are?
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