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Tuesday, August 06, 2019

The grace of five and two

Today I had an hour-long conversation with our newest Serger, approved a few weeks ago and optimistically hoping to arrive mid-Fall to teach MK's at Rwenzori Mission School and otherwise assist families.  This will be the first year I can remember that we will begin the school year teacherless. Meaning a brand new family will hit the ground homeschooling for the first time, and our medical family will have to cut back their work and return from Home Assignment essentially full-time homeschooling too. And when our sole kid-focused worker does arrive, bear in mind that she does not have a teaching degree (though she does have kid-program church experience) and that our team this year is exploding from zero kids now, to 15 when we turn the corner into 2020. Depending on how we define school age, 7-8 need regular lessons and another 3-4 could use preschool. In most of our time in Bundi we had two teachers at a time. . . . so this year looks humanly difficult to say the least.  Thankfully this new Serger has a flexible attitude and a heart of gold.  Pray for her.

Earlier, Scott went through a tally of critical-priority projects at Christ School.  Like fixing a leaking roof, or replacing cooking pans with holes in the bottom, or buying 200 needed books (that's only 2-5 copies of any given text, to be shared, but we have 6 grade levels and more than a dozen subjects). We're not talking about luxuries here, we're talking about fixing doors and repairing a fence and buying Bibles. We tried to do the math through to the end of the year to see which would be possible.  Certainly not all.


Yesterday, within minutes of arrival at the hospital, I'd been pulled in to see a baby with a massive congenital defect of his abdomen, probably not survivable, and we couldn't find a single sterile bag to place over his exposed intestines. Then a child on his last breaths because the oxygen cylinder was empty and his blood transfusion and malaria treatment delayed by lack of IV access overnight (the handy junior doc threw in an intraosseous while we gathered the other supplies). Then a kid who nearly drowned in a pit because of the heavy rains and standing water, and critically ill even ten-year-olds with malaria not to mention all the toddlers, and even more depressing, we re-admitted a child who was severely malnourished and has TB because last week he caught measles from the kid in the next bed.  It took five hours to plod through the entire crowd of mattresses on the floor and people in the hallways, examining and doing my best to understand, decide, calculate, write, and communicate quickly then move on to the next.


Always, the need far outweighs the resource. 

Always, that seems unjust.

So the story of the loaves and fishes popped out in a new way once again. Overwhelming crowds, hungry, distant from solutions, disturbing a needed rest, expectant, needy. Twelve learners, who throw up their hands in exasperation and half-jokingly say, here's what we have, five rolls and a couple of dried fish. Only Jesus does not laugh, or explain, or problem solve. Instead, he immediately thanks God for the tiny resource they have.

And then he spends it, breaks it, gives it away, and it multiplies to satisfy them all.

Maybe I can remember that tomorrow, to thank God for the one vial of medicine instead of complaining that I need a hundred. To thank God that an old friend wrote today and sent money to replace the sauce pans, instead of feeling discouraged about how little of the fence we can fix. To thank God that we have a kid-volunteer, even if we need an entire elementary-school staff. To offer up what we have, not begrudgingly or ironically but with true thanks. Because the paltry limited resources we have are the very place where God is at work. Our constant imbalance and need keeps us from feeling superior or smug. Our dependence on others throws us into the same boat as everyone around us. It actually IS good for us, even though the uncertainty of it all feels as painful and ludicrous as it must have been to start serving thousands of people with a handful of fish.

It is certainly to the glory of Christianity that it has been most insistent on the point of responsibility to others whose only claim upon one is the height and depth of their need. This impulse at the heart of Christianity is the human will to share with others what one has found meaningful to oneself elevated to the height of a moral imperative. But there is a lurking danger in this very emphasis. It is exceedingly difficult to hold oneself free from a certain contempt for those whose predicament makes moral appeal for defense and succor. It is the sin of pride and arrogance that has tended to vitiate the missionary impulse and to make of it an instrument of self-righteousness on the one hand and racial superiority on the other. (Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, as quoted by the Center for Action and Contemplation blog)

WE don't have the abundance from which to feel loftily generous.  Instead we have a desperate need hour by hour, day by day, just like our neighbors and friends, and by staying in the place of discomfort we just might be holding the basket as a witness of a miracle.



1 comment:

Melanie said...

I know this won’t change your situation, but I do pray weekly for you all and the Serge missionaries in Burundi and Kibuye. Yes, praising Jesus in the midst of the difficulties is tough, but scriptural and blessed by our Most High God.
Melanie Williams