Not My Day

This entry is based on my response to something I read in the book we read during our last two weeks there, Crazy Love by Francis Chan:

It's easy to think about today as just another day. ... On the average day, we live caught up in ourselves. On the average day, we don't consider God very much. On the average day, we forget our life truly is a vapor. ...It's crazy to think today is just a normal day to do whatever we want with.

Most of the time I just view each day as another day – more time to continue my life and continue my routine, or, if it’s a day off, time to do whatever I want with. Because of this, I am rarely very intentional with how I spend my time, especially in an eternal context, because I feel like I have so much time, and of course, there’s always tomorrow. I constantly forget how limited my time is. I’m here alive on this Earth for a limited amount of time, though it may seem long right now, and none of it should be squandered. Most of the time I just flow with the day, doing what seems OK at the time, whatever I feel like should happen next or what I have previously planned to do. But days are precious, as is every hour. Yet I just spent an hour watching TV or surfing the internet that will never come back, and it could have been spent doing something of importance, something that would bring glory to God and have eternal significance. How much time have I lost in that manner? It’s just so easy to continue doing whatever I feel like without even stopping to think about what might be best to do, or what I could do to make the most of my time here rather than watch it move on by.

I’ve finally realized that David was really onto something when he said, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

I need to be reminded of this often, before I while a good bit of my time away without doing anything at all meaningful with it, or maybe just less meaningful than it could be. This doesn’t mean I have to be “productive” all the time – we must have times of rest, and our idea of “productive” is all wrong anyway. However, there are many things that are neither productive nor meaningful in any way that I end up doing without considering this. I need to be intentional.

I also get caught up on a regular day in a routine which often, by habit, excludes God from my thoughts or actions except for small things like a prayer at lunch or something like that. Maybe if I remembered how precious my days were, that I’m not just trying to pass time to arrive safely at the weekend or, ultimately, at the end of my life, I wouldn’t stay so focused on a routine and I would include God in everything. Think about that: is the purpose of my life really just to arrive safely at the end with a good reputation and a lot of stuff? That sounds incredibly boring to me – I don’t know about you. Well then, why do I like it’s true?

On a similar note, we have also tried very hard to distance ourselves as much as possible from death. While death used to be much a part of life, we in our culture are very rarely exposed to it at all in real life. Perhaps this is part of the problem, part of the reason we constantly feel like we have unlimited time. I remember reading something by Brennan Manning at one point, the gist of which went something like this: when we cease to think about death and about eternity, keeping these things in our minds, we lose a lot in life. I think he’s right. A related idea is expressed by Chesterton in Orthodoxy as he analyzes the idea of courage, saying that courage is a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die. In fact, many of the most amazing things are done when people are most faced with death. This is even backed up by Christ when he says, “take up your cross and follow me.” In that time, if you were carrying a cross, you were condemned to die, with nothing left to lose. And when we have nothing left to lose, we can do amazing and dangerous things. Yet when we forget about death and what comes after – for us, eternity with our Father – life remains ordinary and we rarely do anything extraordinary.

With this distance I have from death, I don’t think much about the possibility of it at all. I mean, it would be a little weird and morbid for me to consider it all the time, but the problem is that I really do think and live like I’m basically invincible, and certainly not going to die in the next 40 years. I mean, I avoid danger, but I live pretty much assured in my mind that I won’t die or get hurt badly or something like that until I’m old and gray.

How silly. We have no such guarantee, and thinking this way certainly doesn’t prompt me to any urgent action. This perceived security is an illusion. David got it right again when he said somewhere, “How like a puff of wind we are!” Lord, help us to remember that.

I missed this in my journal, but realized it as I wrote. We need to keep in mind always that it will never work for me to just try and remember something like this all the time so that it will change me. David realized this as well. He doesn’t say, “I’m going to number my days, and in this way apply my heart to wisdom.” No, he asks God to teach us. As usual, our strength will fail rapidly. We must look to God, asking and allowing Him to change our hearts so that our lives will change. Yet again, it’s about Him, not me.

Dominican Food, not Mexican...but Montezuma still has to Take Revenge

So I’ve got to say something about the food because it’s so important on our trips J. First of all, Dominican food is not like Mexican food. Dominicans don’t make tortillas, don’t eat tacos, don’t have refried beans, and don’t eat much spicy stuff. Instead, the main staples of Dominican cuisine are rice, beans, and chicken (arroz, habichuelas, y pollo) – a dish known as the Dominican flag – which they eat pretty much every day. And I can see why – Dominican beans and rice are amazing. At each meal we also had bread, fresh fruit (including pineapple, mango, apple, bananas, and grapes), salad, and various deserts. I usually eat to much because there are so many good options.

While we always eat breakfast at the hotel, all of our lunches are prepared by a Dominican woman named Suni (sp?) and a group of other women. So we got awesome, homemade food pretty much every single day. Sometimes during the week she’ll make American food like spaghetti (or as they say, espaghettis) for the sake of those who don’t love Dominican food and our GI tracts, but it’s just as good. We certainly do not starve while we’re there.

For dinners we have several different things throughout the week. The first night we have Papa John’s (Papa Juan’s, we call it), on Sunday nights we go to Jumbo (food court), one night Suni makes fried chicken which we eat at the hotel, one night we go out to a Chinese restaurant, and another night we tour the colonial zone and eat at a restaurant there. On Wednesday nights, we have completely American food, as we grill hamburgers and bratwursts before going to church. As you can see, there’s plenty of non-Dominican food in there so we don’t get bored.

One of our favorite foods they have in the Dominican comes from a frozen yogurt chain called Yogen Fruz. At Yogen Fruz, you have a whole freezer full of ingredients to choose from (from berries to mango to pineapple to chocolate), then what you choose is put in a machine with plain frozen yogurt and completely ground up and mixed in. So, basically, you create your own flavor of frozen yogurt, and you can put different things together, say, strawberry, raspberry, and caramel, or whatever. I think we calculated that there are over 40,000 combinations if you can pick up to three things to put in. Anyway, it’s amazing, and we’re banking one it coming to the US very soon.

Despite any precautions we could take, it seems almost no one on staff escaped getting sick at some point, mainly with nasty, evil GI crud involving nausea, fever, and the body attempting to empty itself from both ends. And apparently they still have colds in the tropics, because a few others got what the Dominicans call “la gripe”, which is anything that involves cold or flulike symptoms. Really, they have colds in the tropics? Then there were those select few fortunate, blessed ones who never got sick. I got sick at the end of the first week with the abovementioned Montezuma’s Revenge. Then, in just one weekend, more than half of the staff (about 12 people) got sick at some point, some pretty badly. We had eaten dinner in the hotel restaurant, which we never do, and it was apparently a bad idea. We do have one funny story that came out of it, however, when two girls became really sick in the same room. At one point, one of them, Katherine, happened to be throwing up in the bathroom. The other, Mallory, wasn’t feeling great, so she went outside for some fresh air. Of course, while she was out on the balcony she suddenly needed to throw up, and so, the bathroom being taken, where else was she to puke but off the balcony on the two floors’ balconies below? Later on, the exact same thing happened, but with their places switched. Oh, the poor maids on the lower floors. From what I hear, that many people getting sick over the course of a trip – or at least all at once – doesn’t normally happen. At least we can look back now and laugh about it!

Singing and Dancing for Jesus...Really!

I love the Dominican church in Cielo. It was here, after our last service worshipping with them, that it hit me how much I loved this country and these people. The people of this church are one of the best examples I’ve seen showing that we don’t material blessing to be faithful, joyful, and satisfied in Christ.

This truth is expressed the most to me in their worship. There is so much energy in their worship and praise, and it’s not just because of the style of music. There is an honesty and genuineness motivating their worship, with no sign of pretense. They sing with all they have and dance for our King because they truly love Him and know that He is worthy. Unlike us, they have not always been secure and fairly certain of having what they needed in the future. Rather, they have had to rely and depend on God, and through this have seen His faithfulness in providing. And so praise out of honest thanksgiving and love. One man in particular just embodies this feeling and personality. He’s an older man, and I don’t know his name, but he gave us so much joy as we watched him just dance and sing, earnestly praising our God for his goodness every single time we worshipped together. You have no idea how happy it made us to see a grown man just dance for the Lord, and we just know that it flows from love and true joy from the Father, not some kind of attempt to look good.

This honest desire to praise was also very apparent the first Wednesday that we were there. It just so happened that the Thursday of that week was a national holiday, Corpus Christi day, or the Body of Christ day. The church, which normally has church on Wednesday night, responded by making the service much longer, continuing to praise God long after the Americanos left – until midnight or one in the morning, simply because they could and they wanted to. I pray that such a spirit invades the American church, which is truly a part of the same body, serving the same God, our Big God. May we understand our God’s love and glory so well that we would just follow the Spirit sometimes and keep praising because He deserves it.

The genuine nature of the worship is solidified to me by the level of participation which the members of the church have in the service. Almost every Wednesday service a group or individual gets up to perform. I’ve heard some beautiful songs that way, and watched a group of girls do a choreographed dance complete with white gloves and black lights. The members of the church are in charge of the band (which is extremely talented) and the singing, and often others preach besides the pastor. In fact, the pastor doesn’t have to do that much because the congregation participates and basically runs the service. I know it’s partly because the Americans were there, but I only heard the church’s pastor preach one time, not because he’s lazy (no way!), but because he didn’t need to.

While of course this church has its flaws as does any human-run organization, when I’m there I am faced with a realness and naturalness of God that I think we sometimes lose in our perfectly planned and laid out services and our inhibitions about really letting lose in worship. I think that if we really faced our true God, our inhibitions would disappear, as did Isaiah’s when he entered the throne room, and we would worship. But only the Holy Spirit can reveal this true God to us – so let’s start praying!

This video doesn't convey it very well or do their worship justice by a long shot, but you'll get a little taste. This is us singing "How Great is Our God" in Spanish. After the video is finished, they actually change and sing the chorus in English just for us Americanos, then it changes to "How Great Thou Art," in Spanish of course. It was awesome.

The Groups and Projects

Over the course of the month we worked on several different projects alongside the American groups that came down. Three main groups traveled to Santo Domingo, one from Montgomery, Alabama; another from Orlando, Florida; and the last from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It was very interesting to be there with several different groups of people, as each was quite different: in personality, age distribution, size, dynamic, and focus. For example, the Alabama group was a youth group of mainly high-schoolers, and they were determined to – and did – get a lot of construction done while they were there. The Winston-Salem group, on the other hand, did much less construction (although that was partly due to the rain) and focused more on relational outreach such as Bible school, the Haitian literacy program, and other events which they organized to better get to know and fellowship with the community. This is, of course, a pretty surface example, as the other differences, in personality, group dynamic, and otherwise, are much more difficult to describe, and not terribly relevant anyway. I can very briefly say that the Alabama group, being comprised of youth rather near our (the staff’s) ages, was generally the most energetic and fun for the staff. And being from the Alabama in the Deep South it was funny to watch the regional dynamics which popped up between Alabamians, North Carolinians, and the Northerners from Rockford, Illinois.

As far as work projects went, they can be divided into a couple different types. First were the one-time, start-to-finish construction type projects. The there were about five separate projects which we worked during the month.

First was Karina’s house, where we mixed and poured the concrete floor and primed and painted the walls, and were able to dedicate the finished house at the end of the first week. Finally having their house finished was a huge blessing to Karina and her husband, who had been living in just half of a house for almost a full year. They had been constructing a house as the money became available to add on, which was a very slow process. Mission Emanuel saw this and decided to help them finish their home. Construction on this half of the house had begun before we arrived – hence the rather small amount of work that had to be done to finish it.

The second and third projects were beginning just as we got there, so we got to build and watch them grow from the ground up. These two projects are situated side by side, only about five feet apart, and will soon be houses. One house is for Vijo and Glendy and their family. Vijo and Glendy are employed by Mission Emanuel and used to live in a house on Mission Emanuel’s property. As Mission Emanuel has expanded, however, their house needed to be turned into offices, so another house is being built for them in the community. The other house is for the family of Aquelino (I think I spelled it right…), who is the physical therapist at Mission Emanuel’s medical clinic who works with their special needs patients.

When we arrived, these two soon-to-be houses were just ditches dug in the shape of a house and rooms where the footers – the foundation – would be poured. When we left, the cinder block walls were going up on each house, and were nearly finished at Vijo and Glendy’s. To get to that stage, however, we had to twist the rebar, mix and pour the concrete footers (using a lot of small buckets), level out the ground in each room, and lay a lot of block. It was pretty dirty and very hot and sweaty, but, believe it or not, we quite enjoyed doing the work. There’s just some about using your hands and body to work and tiring yourself out that you miss when you only use your brain to work, sitting and reading and typing or whatever. It’s a good feeling, a good kind of tired.

I should also tell you about the amazing Haitian workers that work/put up with us at the construction sites. There were about four or five of them always around this year, including Marcos, Luis, and others that I don’t want to try and spell their names because I’d probably get it wrong. They are some of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen, and really good sports, considering they have to teach us how to do everything and fix the things that we mess up. We joke that they see us coming and say (in another language), “Crap! We were getting so much work done, but now those Americans had to show up.” They are, of course, much more efficient workers than we are, and probably can work about twice as fast as we can with better quality. We’re always amazed when we finish work in the afternoon then come back just the next day to see how much work they’ve done. The point being, they’re just awesome.

The next project was one that began in March, actually the one that I worked on during my spring break trip. This was Dominga’s house. In March not much was there yet and we were just smoothing out the floors and pouring some concrete in the columns. When we got here this time, though, the walls were finished and plastered and the roof was already on, with a pile of sand outside just waiting for us to mix into concrete for the floor. So, during the third week the Orlando group mixed and poured the floors, then sanded, primed, and painted the walls. Other workers put in the doors and windows, and it was finished! We dedicated it the Friday of that week – an exceptionally beautiful and powerful thing. There is a story behind that house, and Dominga herself could be a saint, she is such a loving, humble, and godly woman. I’ll tell you more about that time later.

The last project that we worked on during the month was a palm garden in the Mission Emanuel compound. This was also a very special project with a story. It was (and is) special because it is more than just a garden to look nice – it is also a memorial. It was constructed in memory of a student named Spencer who was from Winston-Salem and loved to come to the DR, but who committed suicide earlier this year. Since I’m not from there I don’t any more about him and what happened than the relatively little that I’ve heard. However, I do know from what I’ve seen and heard that this garden is beautiful and lasting show of support and love for him and his family in a time when they certainly need those things. And not only is it a show of our human love, but as a living memorial it proclaims the glory of God alongside the entire creation.

In addition to these beginning to end construction projects, there are also some ongoing projects that we worked on. One was helping to label and bag bottles of water so the Water Treatment facility can sell them. I say this is ongoing because every day we would finish a few thousand bottles of water we would come back the next day to find another mountain of full bottles awaiting us. Personally, I rather enjoyed the work, as mindless tasks can be rather stress-relieving before they become completely boring. And, after all, it was a good cause because according to their sampling tests, this is the cleanest water in the entire country.

Another ongoing project was the Haitian literacy program. It’s just a literacy program because many of the Haitian children do not have the proper documentation and can’t be in a real school. I unfortunately didn’t participate in this very much, although I wish I had. From what I know, all of the children were learning how to read and write in Spanish, as well as singing, praying, and of course, playing. Although not technically a school, this may appear to be the closest to what a school would look like in the United States, as the Haitian children are generally more disciplined and well-behaved than the Dominican children, though no less fun and cute and awesome. This program is really crucial to the Haitians, as simple education goes a long way toward breaking the cycle of poverty.

Perhaps the most permanent ongoing project for Mission Emanuel and the Americans who come is to build relationships and love the people of Cielo and Nazaret, the neighborhoods where the Mission works. This is without a doubt the most important part of the trip and the means by which Christ’s love is most shown. Certainly, we show Christ’s love to people in a very powerful way by providing for their physical needs, and in some ways this backs up our words. It’s like James says: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” But, in response to spiritual need, Christ himself most showed love by hugging and touching and smiling and talking – personal contact. As I’ve said before, it is our time out in the community that most changes us, the Americans, and, I think, the Dominicans as well. It’s in these relationships, though they are unfortunately fragmented or cut far too short, that the most redemption happens for this place and its people, and for us. This is how Jesus works – person to person, face to face.

To see photos of the projects, go to my facebook pictures: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1268050533&v=photos. I'm having trouble getting them in the right place to put them on here.

A Day's Work

This isn’t nearly as exciting in writing as it is in reality, but it’ll help you realize what we do every day on a trip.

On a normal day we got up for breakfast at 7:00am, which we ate at the hotel where we stay. Then we piled into the buses/van at around 8:15 to drive about 20 minutes to Cielo where the Mission Emanuel compound is. From there, we split up to work at different projects such as construction, helping with the Haitian literacy program, or labeling and bagging water bottles at the water treatment facility. As staff, we would generally direct and help with whatever work was being done, as well as serve the group members by bringing them water and mortar and things like that. Then at about 11:30 the staff would leave to help set up for lunch, while the group would work a little longer and come to lunch at 12:30. After lunch a variety of things might happen. Some people might continue the construction projects, while others may go and hang out in the community with kids and families; while some groups held different community outreach activities some afternoons (like mass chaos on the baseball field, aka a kickball game). At about 3:30 we would head back to the hotel for some much needed free time spent at the pool, napping, reading, and general relaxation. Each night we would have dinner at a different place – one night at the hotel, another at Jumbo (Walmart with a food court attached), others at a couple different restaurants. Wednesday nights we would grill burgers and bratwursts at the Mission before going to church, while on Thursday or Friday we would leave the hotel early to tour the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo then eat a restaurant there. (By the way, if you want to find the first of anything in the Americas, look in Santo Domingo , the oldest city in the New World.) Also, sometime during the week we would go to the market, a building full of stalls literally stuffed with souvenirs and vendors trying unceasingly to get you to buy something. Then each night after dinner we would have a staff devotion, often followed by playing some hilarious group games.

I told you it might not sound very exciting, but I don’t think I ever had a bad or uninteresting day there (except maybe the day I got sick). Through what we did, it was so easy to see God, most especially in our interactions with the people – workers on the worksite, children in the community, families in their homes, and people worshipping at church. His glory was everywhere, even in the midst of suffering and poverty – in fact, He overwhelmed it. When it was all done, we were really tired, but it was a good kind of tired. We had spent ourselves for other people and for something bigger than ourselves, and while we were tired, we were also satisfied. We had given, yet we were full. God is Good and worthy of all praise, and his word is true:

And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

-Isaiah 58:10

I Love the Dominican Republic

The next several entries aren’t mainly reflections, just observations and memories that remind me why I love the Dominican Republic. You’ll also get some of the details of the trip – what we did, who was there, what a day looked like, and more.

I’ll start out with my observations and perceptions of the DR itself and its culture, which of course is still quite limited because I’ve mainly only seen on tiny piece of the country and have only been there one month, mainly around a lot of other Americanos.

Picking a random place to begin, the traffic in the DR is crazy, and it’s seems like there’s always a lot of traffic, at least in Santo Domingo. There are certain traffic signals which are basically optional (like one stoplight in particular and most stop signs), staying in the lanes (if they are marked) is optional, and the horn is used liberally for a variety of reasons. These reasons include telling someone to get a move on when they wait a split second too long after a light changes, and alerting someone to your presence so they don’t just decide to change lanes right on top of you. There is no such thing as defensive driving – you would never get anywhere. You just have to turn out in front of oncoming traffic to turn left most of the time, assuming they will slow down instead of hitting you. At many stoplights, men walk up and down the rows of cars trying to sell bananas or necklaces or cell phones or whatever else. Lots of people ride motorcycles, zipping in between lanes of traffic and through the middle of intersections. Sometimes they get amazing numbers of people on these small bikes, too, like 4 people and some other stuff. It’s partly due to these motorcyclists that all roads off of the highway are riddled with the largest speed bumps you’ve ever seen, which require an almost complete stop to drive over. Fortunately, however, we have awesome and very experienced Dominican drivers, starting with the amazing Rodolfo (aka Rodo Baggins), who drives their main bus and Bienvenido (or Bienvo) who drives the staff van and has a wonderful personality at all hours of the day. With all those loud Americans, these drivers put up with a lot!

The weather in the DR doesn’t ever change much, unless it decides to pour rain, as it did often during our last week. I can almost guarantee you that today the highs are in the upper 80s with lows in the upper 70s and consistent humidity in the 80-95% range. Even the Dominicans sweat all the time.

Besides the traffic, most everything else is more chaotic than the United States, including school and the grocery store. In fact, going in the grocery store when it’s busy is about like driving, except you have a cart instead of a car. Nothing generally happens really efficiently, except for the Haitian workers doing construction. The inefficiency is seen especially well at the hotel where we stay, as we tell them to have the group’s rooms ready about an hour early so we’ll have them on time. The power flickers on and off randomly at the hotel, and goes out for hours at a time at the Mission. The water is, of course, very unsafe to drink. Trash isn’t collected very consistently, so many open spaces and gutters are littered with trash (vile plastic!), and the village of Cielo has its own dump site right off the side of the hill in front of the Mission. Cows wander around the neighborhood (I guess everyone know whose they are), along with chickens, dogs, cats, and sometimes ducks. In general, everything is a little bit dirtier and older and more well-used than in the United States, except in the select American-ish places like fast food places, some stores, our hotel, and Jumbo, the DR equivalent of a Walmart Supercenter and a mall put together. Almost all advertisements and business signs are hand painted (very well) onto walls or storefronts rather than having nice logos and manufactured signs.

I say none of this to talk down upon the Dominicans. In fact, I feel almost like Americans are a little too obsessed with everything looking perfectly clean and nice on the outside, and everything being orderly and controlled. While that’s good sometimes, we can carry it a little far. No matter what, though, there are many other things that make me love the Dominican Republic. First of all, at least in the villages where we work, people are very welcoming. They often invite you into their homes then make you sit down, even if the only sit they have is an overturned bucket. They are very giving people, too – we went into one of the poorest houses in the neighborhood and they gave each of us mangos, likely just about the only food they had because they grew on a tree outside. And the children are the best. I don’t think there is a small child in the entire DR who is not cute and playful and loving. I’ll tell more about them later. In general, when you get to know people they are just so loving, humble, and thankful. And while you can really see evidence of the oppression of poverty in so many pairs of eyes, the Dominicans I know are still people of energy and laughter and hope, especially the young ones. It’s really not hard to love them.

In writing all of this, I find that it’s very difficult for me to describe why I grew to love this place and its people so much, and I haven’t done a very good job. I think it will be easier as I describe some more specific things. It's also true that I only know a tiny bit about the culture compared to all their is to know. Now all I can say is that Dominicans are people like you and me – they laugh, play, work, have birthdays, sing, dance, succeed, fail, and feel happy, sad, sick, forlorn, encouraged, grateful, depressed, and triumphant. And I love them not for any rational reason, not for any characteristic they possess. I didn’t try to love them; it just happened. I love them because my God loves me, so much that it overflows into them. God does the loving, not me (fortunately!).

Poverty Cannot Be Ignored

I wrote this in response to my trip to Haiti:

There’s a part of me, or a little voice of the enemy, that says it would be just fine to continue on with my life the way it is and those in poverty can do the same. I mean, am I really that bad? And am I really going to change any of their situations? I was doing just fine before I saw the poverty, wasn’t I?

But then there’s this other part of me, a pretty big part – that part that God has taken control of – and that part says all of that is just crap. I think that even if I wasn’t a follower of Christ, there would be something in me that knew that justice should be and must be brought to other people, that ignoring such obvious suffering is heartless, inhuman, and wrong. It’s that bit called a conscience, what I see as perhaps a little bit of the divine image left unbroken in our makeup. That part asks how I can keep enjoying the blessings and comforts I have in the knowledge that these people have none of them. It inquires as to whether such a life spent in purposeful ignorance and indifference to many of those God loves may just be a poverty of its own.

I think of the beauty brought into my life through music, my opportunities to listen to and play it. I just happened to be listening to music as I rode back from Haiti, and music is really one of my passions, something that gets me going and excited, that brings me intense enjoyment, and that connects me to God. Music is a profound blessing, and I often thank God for the beauty and joy it gives me. But a truth finally struck home as I rode away from the poverty in Haiti – so many are deprived of this beauty which I love so much. The vast majority of the people in the world don’t have an iPod and the ability to listen to just about whatever they want, whenever. So many have no opportunity to learn to play an instrument, even if they wanted to. No, those in the Port-au-Prince tent cities know only noise and pollution and heat and sickness and hopelessness. And here I am, thanking God for His wonderful blessings, ignoring the fact that so many are without this same blessing. The same can be said of so many things in my life which I love and enjoy.

When I consider this, even without thinking about God, who in good conscience could ignore such poverty?

Then, of course, we serve a God who loves the poor. In serving Him, He tells us to love the things and people that He loves, including all of our neighbors – basically all of humanity. And then He still has to tell us over and over to love and serve and give to the poor because over and over we marginalize the poor, forgetting that they are our neighbors, or simply pretending that they’re not. Even when we do serve the poor, we often feel like it’s some kind of spiritual extra credit, earning our brownie points with God for a good spot in heaven or something like that. We’ve decided it’s just an obligation, something “good” people do a little bit of in their spare time and with their spare cash so they can keep their “good” image. We live like God’s command to serve the poor is backed up mainly by a big, cosmic “because I said so.”

But that not it at all. We’ve completely missed it. First of all, our service to the poor is simply justice. It’s bringing just a little bit more of a semblance of fairness into the world. I’m amazed we still have to be convinced of this with words and experiences. If we think people are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then why, when we apply this, does it not apparently apply to those we see in poverty, surrounded by death, oppressed by a lack of options, simple survival a much higher priority than happiness? At least it never applies if it involves us giving up anything of ours - any one of those items in the long list of things that we have decided bring us more happiness, while oftentimes they really squeeze it out of us. Is it fair that I have so much and they have so little, that I have all the opportunities in the world to shape my life and live in prosperity, and they have none? Doesn’t seem like I can justify a “yes” to that one. And speaking of entitlement – I feel entitled to three meals a day, a comfortable bed, a cell phone that works, a college education, an air conditioned vehicle, general comfort all day, and relatively few inconveniences. Otherwise, I’ll probably complain a little bit, or a lot. Man, what if everyone in the world felt entitled to such things, such luxuries! Anyway, the point is that my idea of fairness is pretty warped. Our comfortable lives, free of the tiresome and risky necessity of depending on God for physical things, make it exceptionally easy to ignore anything outside our little worlds, especially this difficult idea of justice and service which actually involves sacrifice.

We are especially good at glossing over the fact that following our Good Fater’s command to serve the poor would actually be better for us. This isn’t a pointless command. He tells us to serve the poor not only because He loves the poor but because He loves us. As silly as it seems in the context of my deluded, self-centered life, giving up stuff and spending my very self on behalf of the poor is actually a blessing for me just as much as it is for those I’m sacrificing for. Just ask anyone who has ever been on a mission trip and they’ll tell you they received spiritually just as much as they gave physically or more. They’ll tell you that when Jesus said “blessed are the poor” He wasn’t just saying they will be blessed when they get to heaven. They’re blessed now, only in a way that we often overlook and blow off as secondary. So many of them are blessed with a spiritual wealth many in America never see, because they know that you don’t need physical stuff to rejoice in the Lord and live life to the fullest. We find out that it’s us who are impoverished. When we serve the poor, we are blessed. It’s not an obligation – why do we keep insisting that it is? It’s a blessing, a command from a loving and just God who has all of our lives at heart, rich and poor, desiring only our good.

The point is that poverty cannot be ignored, spiritual or physical, within our country or without. We can’t just go on with life. And it demands more than just a one-time response – it requires a whole life of bringing justice. It’s not spiritual extra credit but a constant and regular activity for Christ’s followers, an outpouring of His overflowing love in our lives, expressed in many different ways. It’s not just giving money to an organization that fights global poverty – serving the poor may express itself as outreach in our own communities, loving those around us who are depressed, abandoned, unlovable, and hopeless. It’s not an obligation – it’s the command of a good Father, demanded for the good of all His children, because service to the poor reduces the poverty of both the served and the servant.