A sacred piece of Chiclets gum

A couple of days ago I was reading Mark 12:41-44, where Jesus talks about a poor widow dropping her last pennies into the giving box at the temple, and I flashed back to a very touching moment in Haiti. Lizyanna Senterra is one of my young friends who lives in the neighborhood near the orphanage. Her family is very poor, and she comes to the feeding program. On Friday of our trip, our final feeding program, she showed up with her sister and brothers. I decided to sit with her for a while. I was playing with her and her sister Gigi, when her hand raised up toward me holding a yellow piece of Chiclet gum in its plastic wrapper. She held it up and looked at me. I asked, "Pou mwen?" (For me?) She grinned and nodded. I took the piece of gum, but I couldn't chew it right away. I felt kind of guilty receiving something material from a girl who has nothing. She had shown up to the feeding program wearing a shirt and a pair of boys' pajama pants. Her hair is tinged with orange in front, the telltale sign of malnutrition. And she's giving me a gift?

I held onto the piece of gum like it was a sacred object. About ten minutes later, I asked again, "Pou mwen, pa pou ou?" (For me, not for you?) Lizyanna smiled and shook her head "no." I wondered what purer gift there is in the world than a piece of gum given by a ten-year-old child living in poverty. I decided right then to honor Lizyanna, so I took the gum from its wrapper and popped it into my mouth. I started chewing and smiling, and in that moment I was ten again too. For the rest of the feeding program on Friday, I chomped on that piece of gum and relished what the gum represents: fellowship. Who cares that we can barely speak to each other? Who cares that we are from different cultures? Who cares that I'm an adult and she's a ten-year-old? We have fellowship, and that's what matters most in the kingdom of God. How grateful I am that this is what God cares about most of all!

I told some friends this morning that Haiti helps to reset my inner bearings. It's like a spiritual retreat. Ministry here can become very complicated. Schedules, commitments, plans, and the accessories of being a pastor attach themselves to me like barnacles to a ship. The raw realities of Haiti scrape them off. Ministry there, especially on the streets, is very simple. Be the incarnational presence of Jesus among people -- that matters most. For the last couple of years, I have been working on bringing the lessons of Haiti into everyday life here. It has proven to be an elusive goal, but it will be a good day when I can say, "It's not I who live but Christ who lives in me."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Ten essential Dallas Willard quotes

Image
This week the church has lost a great saint and a shining light. Dallas Willard succumbed to cancer. As John Ortberg says in a wonderfully written tribute , Willard was brilliant, but "his heart and his life were better than his mind." I thought it would be appropriate to bring out ten quotes that do a pretty good job of getting at what Willard spent his life teaching and working on. 1. This quote states the central problem Willard spent his career working on: "My hope is to gain a fresh hearing for Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand him. In his case, quite frankly, presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has led to contempt, and contempt has led to profound ignorance." (opening paragraph of  The Divine  Conspiracy ) 2. The central problem, restated: "The governing assumption today, among professing Christians, is that we can be 'Christians' forever and never become disciples." ( The Gre...
Read more

Why I have no hope of going to heaven

Image
I have little hope of going to heaven. In fact, I don't even want to go to heaven. Why? Because if we mean by "heaven" the final destination for God's people, then heaven isn't somewhere we go at all. Heaven isn't up in the sky. Heaven is here. When we say "heaven," most people think it's the place you go when you die. You are with God and his people, and you live forever in eternal bliss. The trouble is, that's a half-truth. It's not the biblical hope. Imagine it like this. Say you are living in a house that has been your beloved home for a long time, but it has fallen into disrepair. The plumbing is bad, the roof leaks and the house is infested with termites. You have painted the walls, and you even bought new kitchen appliances. You love the house, but it needs extensive work. Now through the generosity of a rich relative, you suddenly come into an inheritance huge enough that you can have your beloved house completely remod...
Read more

Backpacking at the Dinkey Lakes

Image
I just returned from a backpacking trip in the high Sierras with my dad and oldest son. We packed in an area near Fresno called the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness. Yes, the lakes were dinky, as in small. Most natural alpine lakes are. But the place is really named for a small dog named Dinkey who protected his master by attacking a charging grizzly bear, giving the man time enough to grap a rifle and kill the bear. Dinkey lost his life for his act of heroism, but he was such an inspiration that an entire Sierra wilderness was named after him. Anyway, we visited eight lakes, each of them stunningly beautiful in its own right. The visit was everything we could have hoped. We shared adventure, exploring places we had never been. We fished -- successfully. We swam and goofed off. We enjoyed each other's company. There is nothing like three generations of a family getting large chunks of uninterrupted time together. The bonds between all three of us were strengthened, and for that we are deepl...
Read more

A test of your relationship with God

Do you have the kind of relationship with God that is like a married couple, including fights and spats? That’s the biblical, Jewish picture of a person who really knows God.  At a certain point in life when I was dealing with some major disappointments, I came to the conclusion that it would be better to yell all my frustrations at God than go through a separation and live apart from him. That’s why I love this quote from Lois Tverberg and her quote of Peter Kreeft so much. Trust me, you’ll want to read to the bottom of this discussion of Job.  “Job’s friends were making the mistake that Western Christians do today when we don’t have a Hebraic understanding of the ‘knowledge of God’—da’at Elohim. A Westerner opens the Bible and wants to prove God’s existence and construct a theology to explain God’s nature. We would call that ‘knowledge of God.’ But in Hebrew, to ‘know’ someone was to be familiar with him through experience and relationship, as a wife knows her husband.....
Read more

Connecting with God when it feels like nothing special is happening

Image
I read recently that Facebook has been known to lead to depression. This person just enjoyed a vacation to Hawaii. That person's kids are cuter and apparently don't act up like yours. And that friend over there just won another award. If you're feeling sassy about your life, you join in on the bragging parade. If that little gray cloud is hovering over you reminding you of how things just aren't turning out, Facebook makes it worse. Today I decided to raise my fist in protest by writing a post about the morning my walk with God was less like leaping forward and more like shuffling along. It's like getting on Facebook and posting, "Nothing special happened in my world this morning. You feel me?" This morning I got up and made tea like usual. I sat in my chair like usual. I began my prayer time, like usual, with these words: "You were [God’s] enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself...
Read more