We were an idealistic group of Americans, and as we crawled out of our van and stood loaded down with loaves of bread, we let the children run to us, their dirty faces smiling.
I looked at the cardboard boxes leaning together posing as walls and roof tops, and thought of how so many called this home. There were old blankets and stuffed animals molded into beds. I couldn’t imagine spending even one night there. But for many residents of the city dump, it was all they’d ever known.
I thought we would come to these people and tell them something they didn’t know. That there is a God who loves them despite their circumstances. I was going to teach them about faith. But mine is a faith clouded with things. Opinions of denominations, the inevitable task of keeping house, daily doses of commercial “freedoms” clouding my vision and confusing me. I can have the best of intentions to love my neighbor the way these people did, but my intentions often get buried under sales flyers, phone calls, emails, and the rat race of my American life.
That day in the dump I realized that one day or even a week of stepping outside my comfort zone was not what I was called to do. It was a good thing to do, but I knew I couldn’t leave it a loaf of bread, wash my hands of it and head home.
The fulfillment of moving forward and reaching out brings joy, feast or famine.
“God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.” –Bono
The light that shone in those eyes I met that day was pure, ignited by the simplest of life’s pleasures. And a knowledge of a loving God that meets people in their need. The Great Comforter is a dear friend to those that live in the city dump. And He is just as close to those of us who are completely distracted. We just don’t often cry out for Him like those who have set aside their pride and realized their need for His daily presence, feast or famine.
My twenty-year-old American mind could hardly grasp the lesson, but I believe it was there.
Stripped bare of all other desires and freedoms, the human soul can finally rise up to meet contentment as that desperate soul comes face to face with it’s Maker. In that contentment there is pure joy, feast or famine.
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