just laser tag, not bowling

The other night I witnessed the most magnificent lightening storm -no, really, I have never lost myself to any such celestial, awe-provoking beauty for more than a few minutes. I laid down and must have stared at the sky in complete amazement for a good half hour. Some people feel and sense God's power in rainstorms -I often don't. Growing up my mom used to tell me that God was bowling in heaven whenever I heard thunder, now thunder just gets on my nerves and makes me a little tense for some reason. I also have never had a penchant for rain -I guess mostly because that means there is not a lot you can do outside and I love being outdoors. But the older get, the more I am starting to appreciate and love all types of weather even rain which is good since I am moving to Oregon soon. But this storm was only a far away lightening storm so you couldn't hear the thunder AND there was NO rain. And, because it was cloudy, you could not see the lightening bolts, only select clusters of clouds brilliantly lit up every couple of seconds -seriously, I can't remember the last time I really lost myself in such fascination with any natural wonder.

In that moment of fascination, I also felt a little frustration. Like many people, I feel closest to God in nature -in the natural world He created. As I stared at the sky, I felt frustrated. At first I felt frustrated because I couldn't figure out why I was feeling frustrated. I have never seen the sky so beautiful before but yet I wanted MORE. I felt very satisfied that I was able to witness such artwork before my eyes, but I also felt very unsatisfied. Then I realized that it wasn't the sky I was wanting more of, it was God that I wanted more of.

I kind of think lightening is like a little teaser or small glimpse of God's shekinah glory. I have seen some pretty incredible sunsets, waterfalls, and mountains -they're beautiful, they're great, they're breathtaking, but they're never completely satisfying. For me it's like I want to be a part of that sunset, waterfall, or mountain -I want to be a part of that kind of pure, faultless, untouched beauty but I can't because of my inherently sinful nature.

Connemara, Ireland -the most beautiful sunset I have ever witnessed

As I stared at the lightening show, all I was able to do was lie there in utter amazement and frustration. I wanted to fully thank God and praise Him for all the beauty He has created but I couldn't find words adequate enough to give Him the praise He deserves. I desperately tried to wrap my mind around the fact that the God I was talking to was the God who was creating all those brilliant flashes of lightening before my eyes and deep down inside I knew this to be true...but it was one of those moments where you are just so flabbergasted that God would choose to love and care for people like us who can never create any sense of beauty that can compare to the beauty He has created that things aren't making logical sense and you are at a loss for words. In moments like these I am realizing more and more that it is OKAY to just stare in speechless amazement at God's creation than try to manufacture some words of praise simply because you feel the need for words.

when helping hurts

We are all called to minister to the poor.  In order to really effectively fulfill this calling it is extremely imperative that we understand who the “poor” are. I just finished reading an excellent book entitled When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. A Taylor professor of sociology who co-led my trip to Rwanda/Uganda recommended it to our team. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to follow Jesus with a genuine, mutually transforming love of neighbor.

Why I love this book….it emphasizes the relational aspect of our calling to serve the poor. We so often overlook how the poor are suffering a great deal on a psychological and social level while we overemphasize our need to provide for them materially. Fikkert points out how often we don’t recognize the feelings of helplessness, anxiety, suffocation, and desperation low-income people face on a daily basis.

Another main premise in the book is that we are all poverty-stricken. We are all poor, the fall is wreaking havoc in all our lives –we are all broken, just in different ways. The problem of poverty is relationally rooted and until we fully realize this, we will continually be blinded by materialism. Until we embrace out mutual brokenness, our work with low-income people is likely to do far more harm than good.

A major issue when it comes to poverty alleviation is this god-complex we often get. We always tend to have this sense of superiority whether we recognize it or not –we tend to think we have the best method of doing something, we think we know how to fix everything, and we think we are the only ones who can fix things.  We also have American idols of speed, quantification, compartmentalization, money, achievement, and success which is a reason why short-term missions trips can sometimes cause more harm than good.

We need to recover from our sense of pride as much as they need help recovering their sense of dignity.

We also need to get it out of our heads that we are bringing Christ to poor communities –He has been active in these communities sense the creation of the world (Hebrews 1:3).  We do not have the power to alleviate poverty –no matter how much we improve methods or better technology, reconciliation is ultimately an act of God.

Our poverty-alleviation efforts need to become more holistic in their design and execution. The problem of poverty alleviation is pretty simple….we must go well beyond the material dimension. The poor in low-income countries describe their condition in far more psychological and social terms than the North American population.

“The most basic issue now facing black America is: the nihilistic threat to its very existence. This threat is not simply a matter of relative economic deprivation and political powerlessness –though economic well-being and political clout are requisites for meaningful progress. It is primarily a question of speaking to the profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness, and social despair so widespread in black America.”

“….God who is a worker, ordained work so that humans could worship Him through their work.” We have to wisely steward our resources in order to better help other people become more responsible stewards of what they have.

As I think over some of the organized mission efforts I have engaged in over the years, I am sickened over one particular trip I took with a college team to Texas. Our mission was to help rebuild and restore houses that were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Ike. I remember working with our team on a few of the houses while the homeowners just stood by and watched us. One homeowner was bold enough to ask us to perform some edification work on his house –NOT immediate relief work (and it gets worse…this wasn’t even the house he lived in, this was a house he rented out to others). Instead of spending hours futilely chiseling away with a tiny hammer (we were limited on tools) at massive stones cemented to the side of the house, we should of stopped what we were doing and went back to the local mission organization to give a more accurate report of this house. Throughout the trip we did have some pretty good conversations with people BUT we probably also caused way more harm than good by not engaging the homeowners in the work we were doing.

The more I read this book the more I started to realize the depth of complexity that surrounds poverty alleviation efforts. It is so easy to impose our own cultural assumptions into contexts that we do not understand very well. Part of me wants to just give up trying to figure out how I can more actively engage in trying to reach out to the poor in my own neighborhood. Instead I kind of just want to give into that idea of post-modernism where “what is true for me might not be true for you” and my interpretation of Scripture might be so culturally bound that what I am really doing is imposing more culture on someone than Scripture. Of course this is a lie that is making many North American Christians fearful of engaging in evangelism and discipleship activities. While the Truth of Scripture is transcendent over cultures, postmodernism has helped to rectify some of modernism’s overconfidence.

Regardless of whether someone is actually helping or unintentionally hurting the poor, I think God will still reward their efforts and motive but one needs to constantly evaluate the situation to see what kind of help is needed. There is a time when immediate relief is necessary but more often there are times when rehabilitation and development are more necessary and understanding this is crucial.

In Matthew Jesus calls those on His right “blessed” for they fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, invited the stranger in, clothed the naked, and visited those in prison. I think this passage could very well also read “you are blessed for you loved the unlovable, you took the time to sit down and to listen to the burdens of the poor, you didn’t just share your material possessions but you shared your time and energy.”

It’s easier to drop food out of planes than to take time to befriend the poor. “…long-term relationships are needed to bring out the best of “what is” and of “what could be.”

There is no recipe for success in poverty alleviation but Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), Asset Mapping, and Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) are just a few approaches that have worked well in addressing the issue from a holistic perspective.

Poverty alleviation must first start from within.

 “….an attitude of humility and brokenness is everything.”

Reconciling relationships -moving people closer to glorifying God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation -is the essence of poverty alleviation.  

a few African moments

I became more of a person on my flight to Africa:

On the long trans-Atlantic flight over to Addis Ababa I started reading Carl Roger’s On Becoming a Person. As I was reading I totally resonated with this line: “The more I am open to the realities in me and in the other person, the less do I find myself wishing to rush in to “fix things.” It’s funny and kind of ironic how, as counselors especially, we want to know and explore all the complexities of both ourselves and others and, yet, this further makes things complicated. Life is so full of complex processes and understanding this should make one less inclined to hurry up and try to “fix things” and to try to “manipulate” people to go in the way we want them to go. I think similar things can be said about missions. As humanist Carl Rogers says, we need to accept and warmly regard every human being with a high degree of unconditional self-worth “of value no matter what his condition, his behavior, or his feelings.” Before we fling the gospel at anyone, we need to first understand what it means to have “respect and liking for them as separate people, a willingness for them to possess their own feelings in their way.”

Deciphering and understanding cultural differences is a very tricky and risky business yet a very crucial one and perhaps a little dangerous –dangerous in the sense that further understanding often naturally weakens the initial drive to achieve that understanding. The older I get the more I realize how much I don’t know….and maybe don’t want to know? People are complicated, cultures are complicated and the more we know about either one, the more complicated they actually become. However, we are called to dive deeper and deeper into these bottomless mysteries and what a tremendous spirit of humility is required in order for us to do so.  

Learning to literally see Jesus everywhere in everyone:

One weekend we left the capital of Kigali for the smaller town of Gisenyi. We spent the night at a church/theology school compound. During the night, almost half our team experienced what we thought was the rapture taking place. I typically sleep soundly through most thunderstorms but in the middle of the night I was startled awake as my whole bed with mosquito net covering shook. Above my bed my window lit up a very bright shade of orange for what seemed like a half of a minute and I simultaneously heard the loudest booming sound I think I have ever heard before. My first thought upon waking up was that the world was ending. I felt a sense of panic as I wondered how I was going to escape the apparent fire that was quickly closing in all around the compound as the bright shade of orange still lingered across my entire window. I quickly ran down the hall to where a few of my other teammates were but they were of little comfort for they were soundly asleep. 

The next morning I was planning on keeping my little rapture experience to myself in fear of being laughed at until another team member said they thought they saw Jesus last night. They too woke up to the explosion in the sky and within seconds their bedroom door flew opened and there was Jesus standing in the doorway.  This “Jesus” figure was actually another team member coming in the room, but only the outline of this figure was seen and so this girl thought: “Jesus is coming to get me to take me home!” Who knows for sure if it was just the thunderstorm that woke us up...or even a bomb for we were only a few miles from the Congo (although much of the political unrest more often occurs in the country’s interior).

Some powerful quotes placarded on the wall in the genocide memorial center in Kigali:

“When they said “never again” after the Holocaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?”

“There will be no humanity without forgiveness, there will be no forgiveness without justice. But justice will be impossible without humanity.”

“If you knew me and you really knew your self, you would not have killed me.”

“But the genocidaires did not kill a million people. They killed one, then another….day after day, hour after hour, minute by minute. Every minute of the day, someone, somewhere, was being murdered, screaming for mercy. And receiving none.” 

 “God must love America more”                       

While spending a few days teaching at a girls’ school in Rwanda, some of my team members and I were asked some pretty tough questions. Initially, we were always asked: “Do you have a mother and a father?” (many lost their parents in the genocide or due to AIDS) and “How old are you?” and “Why aren’t you married yet?” but later as conversation continued I was posed a question that I was not expecting, a question I did not know the answer to, a question that made every part of me twinge in guilt, disgust, anger, confusion, and embarrassment. One of the girls asked me: “How come America is so much more blessed than Africa?” As I stumbled for words, I said something to the effect that just because people are rich in America doesn’t mean everyone has a relationship with God and often riches get in the way of people loving God. As I dialogued with an American Peace Corps volunteer later that day, she explained how she constantly needs to remind her students how we are all the same people with the same desires –how we are never satisfied with what we have, we always want more. However, I felt if I simply told them that God loves them as much as He loves Americans it would probably just make me feel better.

"All that has perplexed us in the providences of God will in the world to come be made plain. The things hard to understand will then find explanation. The mysteries of grace will unfold before us. Where our finite minds discovered only confusion and broken promises, we shall see the most perfect and beautiful harmony. We shall know that infinite love ordered the experiences that seemed most trying. As we realize the tender care of Him who makes all things work together for our good, we shall rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

africa has indeed kept part of my heart

After 38 hours of traveling and 4 flights later I finally made it home last night from spending most of this past month in Rwanda and Uganda. Now I fully understand why everyone who goes to Africa on a missions trip comes home and changes their Facebook profile picture to that of a picture of them holding a little orphan. In search of a mild sense of relief for this pain I now feel for leaving half my heart in Africa, I succumbed to any feeling of abashment for conforming to the standard Facebook protocol one follows upon returning home from an African missions trip.

Last night I was talking with a friend who mentioned how funny it is that sometimes it takes us going all the way around the world to hear God's voice more clearly or to learn simple spiritual lessons that were too difficult to learn at home. Of course God is speaking to us all the time wherever we are but sometimes I think we are more apt to hear Him speaking to us when we are in different or difficult circumstances or maybe even dangerous circumstances rather than the often dull, daily circumstances of everyday life.

God definitely spoke to me during my time there. I wasn't expecting Him to speak to me through a mighty wind, or a powerful earthquake, or a brazen fire for I feel He sometimes speaks to us best through that still small voice He spoke to the prophet Elijah in. Not that God only speaks in a still small voice but what I mean to say is that I wasn't expecting to experience a mountain-top spiritual high. Going into the trip I was cautious not to let my doubt of having a spiritual mountain-top experience negate any spiritual renewal or revelation I could have had but didn't as the result of closed-mindedness or of having low expectations. Yet God chose to speak to me through a little infant boy badly infected with HIV whose name, quite ironically, is Elijah. He also spoke to me through the relationships our Taylor team built with the students at Kampala International University and the ALARM (African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries) staff in Rwanda.

Before the trip began and in the initial stages of it, I felt a lot of guilt as I weighed the costs and benefits of short-term missions trips and my own reason for wanting to go to Africa. I used to have this philosophy that if you have already experienced one or two short-term missions trips, the external costs of going on an additional trip(s) outweigh any internal benefits because most of these benefits hopefully have already been experienced during one's first missions trip. God challenged this belief.

During our first week in Rwanda I struggled with trying to understand why I was still feeling incredibly selfish and guilty....I thought if God really wanted me here then why was He allowing me to feel this way? God then spoke to me....not in a big way but through every little interaction I had with the people there, in every smile exchanged, in every laugh shared, in every tear cried, in every hug and handshake, through every dance and song. During our time in Uganda God did something incredible -He forged some deep, meaningful relationships between people of vastly different geographical locations, personalities, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Our lives are spiritual journeys and for me this 3 week trip to Africa was one significant spiritual journey itself within a larger span of a spiritual journey [my life]. During this 3 week spiritual journey God really taught me the importance of relationships. I used to be more of a task-oriented person growing up, but the older I get the more I realize that it's people who matter most. Over the last few years I really struggled from time to time with the idea of how I should be spending my time. I would become quite distraught over whether I should be doing this activity or that one -both may be equally good things but I would constantly fret over whether or not what I was doing was in God's will for my life and whether or not there was another activity I could have been doing that would bring God even more glory or make an even greater Kingdom-impact. Every day -and especially on this trip -I am realizing more and more that it is people who matter and not so much things or tasks. During my college years I would often feel frustrated with how tied down I was to my schoolwork -I felt I wasn't doing enough for God....not that I felt I needed to do a certain amount of good works but I just felt I wasn't doing as much as I could to further God's Kingdom. While on this trip God supplied me with a sense of comfort and peace regarding the next five years of my life which will be spent in graduate school. If there is one major lesson I learned while in Africa it is this.....it doesn't really matter where you are or what you are doing (as long as they are God-honoring places and things) but what matters is the condition of your heart.....we are most God-honoring and God-glorifying when we give Him our all wherever He takes us and in whatever task He provides for us.

There were times on this trip, as there were times on other missions trips and at other points in my life, where I felt kind of useless and I questioned the impact we were having at times. What good is there in holding a two month old baby slowly dying of HIV? When we leave the orphanage for the day even the oldest toddler probably doesn't remember us for more than a few hours or maybe a couple of days so what's the point other than to experience sadness as time draws near when we must say goodbye? Did we really come all the way to Africa to help paint part of a building? But then I came to realize through these activities that this is the work God has provided for us and we should thank Him for it first of all and then fully engage ourselves in it....we most glorify and honor Him by being fully present both in mind and spirit while doing whatever it is that we are doing, in whatever work God has provided. For me I am still not entirely sure if earning my doctorate in clinical psychology is completely in God's will for my life but I do know and take peace in knowing that it probably isn't outside of His will if He has already allowed me to get into the program, has blessed me with the financial resources, intelligence, and determination to go through the program. I know this time spent in school will allow me to hopefully impact a greater number of people on a greater level some day. Five years of graduate school is just another long, integral segment of my even longer life-long spiritual journey.

Last week while in Uganda we were encouraged to write a poem summarizing what we were feeling as the trip progressed so I tried to compose to the best of my ability, in a short-time frame, the following poem:

Another trip around the world, another white flag unfurled.


Any initial guilt has been slowly starting to wilt.


When did fetching a pail of water suddenly become more important than His own precious daughter?


Every cow, every hill, every banana tree, reveals a new glimpse of the incredible beauty of Thee.


In the middle of the floor lies a broken toy, around the corner comes streaming tears of joy.


Columbus, Kampala, Canton, Kigali, Calcutta, or wherever, you will always find a neglected orphan, a slighted widow, and a needy mother.


Books and bread, clothes and cars, polished glass and scrap metal, it doesn't really matter what it is in the kettle.


A crack in the wall, a tear in a shirt, a tear-stained, dirty cheek, a half crooked smile, a doubly-bent knee, when will we learn to really see and just be?