Post Script: After posting this, I read what others wrote on this chapter....and a couple have me undone.
One was this quote by Mother Teresa: "It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you can live as you wish."
The other is reading about this small family in Haiti....and ...well just read it.
Undone. Now...what to do?
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I am a little tired of Radical. ok. there. I am being honest.
Actually I am enjoying the book, but I am making myself go slow...in the pace of the book club (one chapter a week) and I am tired of the tension and questions left hanging each week. Tension in me, unanswered questions in my heart...
What am I to do with this?
How can I even buy a latte, (I have one in my hand) when I know the state of those in the world? (See one less latte)
And what difference can one momma and four children do?
And how?
and where?
Just to list a few questions.
I know living "radical" is not a boxed design, one size fits all. So it is the question over our radical that is causing the tension.
This chapter on the lost was hard. painful. Adding more questions to the list.
Why don't I ache for the lost here? (US). or ALL the lost?
Here: I ache for foster children. I ache for single mommas with no hope. I ache for older people with pressing poverty and lonely days and nights.
There: I ache for poverty stricken, hungry, orphans, abused, hurting.
Do I ache more for their circumstances or for their souls?
Does my ache cause me to do anything?
And then, why don't I ache for the middle-class, upper-class busy-schedule, life-is-full people all around me, who are living a short life and then a long eternity with out God? A life of pursuing this and that to fill their soul, that like cotton-candy melts on the tongue with a taste soon forgotten and no substance in side.
Why?
I think, perhaps. because for a long while THIS WAS ME and I WAS A CHRISTIAN. See those two statements should NOT go together. But it is true. See Jesus being the answer, which I believe he is, was such a long and convoluted (and sometimes it feels like complicated) journey for me. For too many years, I stumbled and did not get it, left and forgot it, came back and stumbled some more...until one fall, God happened for real in my life.
And the bottom line to all the emptiness with Christ inside was this: "DISCIPLESHIP". No one had every shown me or taught me how to follow Christ. How to go to church? yea. How to serve this way or that? yea. How to attend the most boring Bible Studies in the world? Yea.
But not how to follow Christ. I had never even heard the concept of being discipled. And then, in desperation between God and I, I stumbled into it. The Word, daily, put a fire in me. Then He led me to practicing his presence. Then he led me to....etc etc etc. What I call (thanks to Mark Buchanan) the Holy Habits of God. Without them, God was not working in my life. The songs were untrue words. The scriptures were great concepts with no reality in my life.
SO...with that being my case...I may have developed a reluctance to share God as the answer, when it has such a long and hard answer for me...and I still struggle so much.
Yet. Flipside: I see one of my children wake on the grouchy side of a mood, and I think, how can you even handle a grouchy morning without Jesus to talk to? So it may be a struggle and stumbling walk, but yet, it is the personal relationship of Jesus that sustains.
I want to have an ache for the lost. souls. Not just an ache for tragic circumstances. So I do not know what God is going to do with me. But I am willing, opening, wanting. I want to be surrendered and used as he would.
So I sit another week in tension. I know this weeks blog on Radical is not clear, hopeful or concise. Just my confused, tension-filled mind at this point.
I trust God to lead on and answer at some point my question: What do I do with this?
5 Things Others Said:
Oh, Sandee. I love what you said about wanting to have an ache for the lost, not just tragic circumstances. That is where I really, really struggle. I want God to help me care about the rich, lost people too, and that's so hard for me.
I know you're frustrated, but this post really, really spoke to me, so I hope that encourages you just the tiniest bit to keep on truckin'. :)
nope, i think i get you. how do i share Christ when i've struggled so much with my faith? how do i encourage people to attend church when for me church is a huge source of pain right now? how do i communicate the great love of God for us when sometimes i wonder if God is playing a practical joke on me? and then like you, i wonder how on earth i would get through this without being able to talk to God, without seeing His presence in my life, without His hand upholding us? i see people hurting and i want to tell them just to cry out to Jesus. maybe that's where i need to start...
thank you for sharing your thoughts. i found them meaningful. :)
"I want to have an ache for the lost souls. Not just an ache for tragic circumstances."
That is one area that I am realizing is incomplete in my life. I ache for the tragic circumstances around the world, and do what I can to raise awareness and to help. But do I tell people about Jesus? Not really, no. I seem to care more that people's lives are uncomfortable then that they will be separated from God for eternity. My perceptive is still skewed to this world.
You inspired my blog post today Sandee :-) Thanks for the convicting insight!!
http://nothingsandnotions.blogspot.com/2010/10/where-is-my-hearts-focus-really-at.html
Wow, this is wonderful insight, Sandee. I agree this tension is hard- but it is good, no? I know I needed this shaking up.
Your point is so important. I know I ache more for the circumstances of the poor, the orphans than the lost. This is something to commit to prayer!
Thanks again for this post!
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