seeing sacrifice in new dimensions

It is hot here. I don’t have my own independent means of transportation, my schedule is up in the air and decided by many other people other than me, the food is different and I don’t always get to pick what I want to eat or when I eat it.

None of these things in themselves are bad or hard. But for some reason when the all get lumped together in a short period of transition my world seems as if has been turned upside down, I lose my sense of balance and I fall, so fast into a world of self-pity and complaining. How easily I forget the great Love the Father has for us.

Yet those who I have been meeting these past two weeks have not forgotten. It is the Love of the Father and their understanding of it that has compelled them to live lives so sacrificial and characteristic of the gospel unlike anything I have seen before. Recently, we have been able to visit several different slum neighborhoods, to get to know some of the pastor and the people of God in these areas. O how remarkable they are. Last Tuesday I met Pastor Renez in a slum community outside the city. The first thing I noticed about him was his smile and great joy. He seemed so happy-happy to see us and happy to show us around his church area. Then I saw his house, met his wife and two of his four children. There was no electricity, no running water, a dirt floor. The house was made of old grocery store signs and blue plastic tarp. Yet they were all still smiling and actually joking about the signs that made up the walls of his home. How can someone choose to live like this, I ask myself. It’s not right for any human being to live in a place like this and a pastor and by his own choice? It doesn’t add up in my two-dimensional mind. What am I missing? What dies he see that I don’t? The decision I see him making is the choice of his living situation, but I wonder if his decision was more focused on the Father’s love for others. And following in his Father’s example the only choice to make is to love sacrificially.

When my eyes are closed to those around me all I do is focus on myself and then the complaining begins. But when I see those around me who have far less, their lives are considerably harder physically and emotionally and yet they give far more than I do.

God didn’t have to bring me to the other side of the world to tell me that I am selfish. I already knew that. But being around such sacrificial servants of the King brings a new dimension to note. Lord, help me to see your love in more dimensions.