I got a text this week, asking why we keep going. Perhaps inertia, perhaps hope, perhaps the sovereign plans that are bigger than us, perhaps many motivations we aren't even able to see.
In Ephesians 3, Paul writes that "through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places." Not a phrase that ever stopped me in my reading tracks before. But this week, it did. It sounded like a pretty good summary of what's happening here.
First that word "manifold" is actually in the Greek, “multicoloured”. Varied, diverse, multifaceted. A good reminder that God’s thoughts and ways are complex, even perplexing, and also beautiful. Mysterious, but in a way that invites rather than excludes. In a novel I was reading this week, this line about the ritual of a funeral: “the opacity of God unites them briefly before His clarities again divide.” Yes. Manifold wisdom has lots of space for variety. And as hard as it is to take in and comprehend, when you do, it is rich and resonant. A painting perhaps, or a musical, being watched by the unseen cloud of witnesses. Or a rainbow, stretched over a perplexing landscape.
As complex and beautiful as the shining wisdom is from our human viewpoint, because it comes from God it is consistently true. And the deepest truth of the universe is love. Which is what the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places can witness, watching life on earth play out. To quote Tish Harrison Warren one last time (sadly we’ve reached the last chapter in our team study) . . . God’s love is the primary constant of our reality, like the speed of light, an unchanging reliable center. Sounds clear . . . Yet we encounter the love of God paradoxically in our actual life, slogging through the gritty fray… refracted through suffering. When the speed of light is refracted by rain/cloud/tears . . we get a rainbow. Light plus cloud, love plus suffering, viewed from a place apart, show the way.
So we keep at it. This week, this month, this year, this life. Bumping up against corruption when we get called to pay dubious fees, for instance. Bumping up against poverty when only 3 of our 76 students taking final exams have actually paid their final tuition, making it challenging to feed everyone or keep up with electricity and water and staff salaries. Bumping up against our own weary frailties, and the pesky illnesses of team kids and friends, or the dangerous reality of Ebola climbing to over 100 cases and 48 deaths in Uganda now. Bumping up against hard decisions, separations, longings as we work with 76 Sergers in our Area who all have to weigh the needs of their families of origin , their families on the field, their kids who might be in boarding school, their teams and communities close by, and want to love them all in spite of it being impossible.
Monday afternoon, a good portion of those 76 joined in an Area prayer time by zoom, because our vulnerable humanity trying to shoulder those crosses NEEDS the powerful presence of Jesus, and we find that as we pull together with Jesus’ family in prayer. From people in a dusty arid town in Kenya learning Bible Stories to share with others, to teen girls in Malawi receiving counseling as they heal from trauma, to a doctor in Burundi pulled out to rush to an emergency C-section, to food supplements for people in DRC displaced by yet another flare of rebel warfare, to a Bible study with ophthalmology residents in Rwanda, to an engineer triple checking a zillion calculations to bring clean water to thousands of people in Uganda, this is the refraction of that light of love through the cross of Jesus in our Area as we prayed.
CSB chapel today, the good news of God's love into our vulnerability going out
If all this reflection on why we keep on going, what is really happening in Serge East and Central Africa, in the lives of countless real people in the church universal, is too "manifold" to make sense, well, that's part of being human. But let me end with one of my favourite songs ever, because Dave Wilcox expresses everything I've stumbled clumsily through above in poetry and music, which are a much better language for love.
SHOW THE WAY (click here or here or here to listen as you read the words)
You say you see no hope
You say you see no reason we should dream
That the world would ever change
You say the love is foolish to believe
'Cause they’ll always be some crazy
With an army or a knife
To wake you from your daydream
Put the fear back in your life
Look
If someone wrote a play
To just to glorify what's stronger than hate
Would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late?
He's almost in defeat
It's looking like the evil side will win
So on the edge of every seat
From the moment that the whole thing begins
It is love who mixed the mortar
And it's love who stacked these stones
And it's love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we're alone
In this scene, set in shadows,
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it's love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love can show the way
Now the stage is set
You can feel your own heart beating in your chest
This life's not over yet
So we get up on our feet and do our best
We play against the fear
We play against the reasons not to try
We're playing for the tears
Burning in the happy angel's eyes
For it's love who mixed the mortar
And it's love who stacked these stones
And it's love who made the stage here
Though it looks like we're alone
In this scene, set in shadows,
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it's love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love will show the way
1 comment:
Thanks for this!
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