And They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love*

Of course *, with a title like that! You are welcome to read this post (obviously), but know that it's long, and it was written to work out some stuff. Maybe you are in the trenches too, having trouble seeing the big picture over the edge?

I can't imagine what it's like to be a person the world doesn't want. Sometimes I feel that way, but I am not in the sense that some are.

Take refugees. The people no nation wants to claim. Even when a country grants them entrance, they come with nothing. They probably don't speak the new language, they are placed in the most unsafe and rundown of neighborhoods, they have few connections or sense of what their new culture is like. Who knows what horrors or misery they left that remains in their memories. They most likely lived in a hot place and arrive in some Northern winter tundra. Though they have been "accepted," they really aren't in the true sense of the word. If you've spent time with refugees, you understand the desperation many of them have painted on their forehead, the kind that thoroughly frightens people off.

Speaking of unwanted, Jeff and I were discussing last night some statistics we came across about "wiping out the problem of Down's Syndrome." No, there has not been a cure found. No way to prevent a gene from not doing what it's supposed to. This involves aborting fetuses discovered to have Down's - and is being done at the rate of around 85% of pregnancies of this kind of child. I think of friends who love their Down's syndrome children and every day fight for their health or rights.

Further illustration of unwantedness: lately I have been haunted by the image of a woman I saw in a You Tube clip Slum Survivors. She had three children, was a widow (her husband died of AIDS and left her HIV positive, which caused her in-laws to banish her), had no education or skills, and lived in a Kibera slum. She leaves her kids everyday to try to look for work, probably hand washing someone's clothes. Three days out of seven, she finds it, and can feed her kids. The other days, she can't. And the image of her trying to rock a hungry baby to sleep is burned into my brain. I hear her saying,"I have asked God many times to change my situation, for my kids. But so far...no."

Things like this are a sucker punch to my faith. I read a woman's blog who reported finding comfort in her frazzled middle class American life in a verse that God has never left her. How hard is it, then, to believe God hasn't left you when you ask Him and ask Him to change the situation you are in (the one where you're dying, in terrible pain, and can't feed your kids - whose only help rests in you), and it doesn't change?

Refugees, orphans, the billions of people who die in slums. Single moms on welfare here in the States. People caught in terrible addictions. We might say some of these people are products of their own vices - but we have vices too. We just have the position and money to keep us out of these situations. Or our vices have contributed to the Third World slum conditions for millions - we just are not directly suffering the consequences. These are the people the world has forgotten. And yet God promised He hasn't forgotten them. Where is He?

Here, in us. In all the people who claim to be His. People who are full of problems and pain and have vices of our own. We are His hands and his feet. This is what God has been whispering in my soul when I wrestle with this. "They will know you are Christians by your love for one another." Not, "because you have all the answers." God's hope for a future is delivered in our love for one another. Not just for the well-groomed and together ones. Also for the ones who are weary and need rest. Also for the ones who need clothed, fed, and companionship.

We live in a slick society where you are supposed to present a polished face at all times. Valentine's Day is just around the corner and our consumer society wants to sell candy and jewelry and make us believe that you are loved only if you are beautiful.

In reality, God has us written on the palms of His hands, even if we are old or poor or sick or selfish. In the trenches Christians are waging war on injustice with God's love, places like my church or the Center for New Americans. And these are places that no matter what you look like, speak like, or have, you belong. Some of you who will read this are people who are devoted to your children, to victims of the terror in Sudan, to homeless people, to addicts, to slaves, to your elderly neighbor -you are in the trenches. You are beautiful, an agent of love, the face of God to those who need to see it.