Wonderings and Wanderings

We are on our Mission Trip to San Antonio this week.  To read updates and see pictures of our trip, go to www.refugeonline.org/pictures.htm and click on "San Antonio"!!

Mel

I’m sitting out on my back patio with my laptop, a good book, and a cup of steaming coffee.  Okay, I don’t have the coffee but it just seemed like the right thing to add to the picture.  I actually have an Evian water bottle filled with tap water.  A metaphor for many things in life.  But I am on the patio with the other said items and it is indeed a perfect morning.  There is a gentle breeze and a light rain falling turning everything into lush green wonders.  The breeze comes and goes wrapping in to hug me and then pulling away to do its thing. 

It is a beautiful morning because I’m ceasing this morning.  When it is an odd feeling to cease, you know that you need to make changes in life. When you have an evening uncommitted or a morning without a deadline and it feels incredibly odd, then perhaps one is too busy.

Today is Independence Day.  A day when people celebrate freedom . . . from their places of work. 

This very moment three jets from a nearby military base flew over the house on their way to the Independence festivities downtown.  Before I ever saw them, I heard the incredible noise from their engines.  As they neared the house, the sound was so deafening that I braced for the impact of a plane landing in my back yard before my very eyes. Nothing happened.  Nothing fell from the sky. And then I saw them flying overhead at unimaginable speeds on their way to awe the little children downtown with red smiles from their cherry snow cones.

My eyes welled up with tears from the realization that that sound, that deafening roar is a sound many people hear on a daily basis around the world.  They sit in their houses and they hear an ever increasing sound coming their direction.  But they don’t sit there with their Evian water because their mind outweighs their fears reminding them that the likelihood of some plane or bomb landing on their house is as likely as the Terminator becoming Governor of California.  Yes, it can happen but you are completely flabbergasted and awe-struck that it ever did.

People in countries of ceaseless war don’t just sit there when those same sounds near their home and it did mine.  They take action.  They gather their children and family, their most prized possessions, and run for safe cover to escape the certain destruction from above. I have no idea.  No idea at all.  No realm for understanding or comprehension.  The small amount of fear I just felt a minute ago gave me a pathetic taste of the reality of life for many.

Independence Day.  A day of patriotism.  Fredreck Buechner says, “True patriots are no longer champions of Democracy, Communism, or anything like that but champions of the Human Race.  It is not the Homeland that they feel called on to defend at any cost but the planet Earth as Home.”  Perhaps today as I celebrate freedom with friends, fireworks and funnel-cakes I will remember the sound of the jets and will act for freedom for all in my Homeland.

For those who weren’t at High School Basecamp this morning, we spent the morning talking about the genocide in Darfur that is occuring at this very moment. Some of us had no idea what is happening to men, women, and children across the Atlantic Ocean.  Some of us had heard the word "Darfur" in the news here and there but didn’t stop to find out more.

This morning, through video and stories, we were introduced to the horrible and inhumane crimes that are being committed in Sudan. Rapes, murders, genocide, displacement.  Over 400,000 murdered since 2004.

We felt bad.  Our hearts went out to them. We were reminded this morning in the Luke 10 text that the Good Samaritan’s heart went out to the beaten and bloodied man on the road to Jericho.  But the text doesn’t end there.  It begins there.  A heart broken and compassionate for those that suffer, those that are hurt, those that are marginalized, those that are oppressed. That is a beginning but not the end.

It begins with a heart movement and quickly transforms into physical movement.  Action.  Steps of caring, intervention, justice, love.  Its not enough to feel bad. Feeling bad doesn’t help the orphaned child in the refugee camp in the neighboring country of Chad who faces life without family, without a home, without hope.  Our tears don’t quench their thirst.  Pity has never fed a hungry man’s appetite for food and for hope.

I’m invited you this morning and I’m inviting you now to join me in making a change with God’s help.  I’m convicted. I’m saddened by my own failure to take action.  I’m sick to see myself in the religious leaders that passed by the beaten man along the road.  But I realize this . . . its not about how I feel.  It’s not about how I feel bad or guilty about my failures.  It’s not about feeling good when I take action.  It’s not about me at all. 

It’s about God.  It’s about the God I love.  It’s about what is right.  It’s about seeing the beautiful people in the Sudan, in Iraq, in our prisons, in our schools, in our projects, in our family, and in the mirror the way that God sees us.  We are one.  We are community.  We are connected.  We are the created.  We are family.  When one hurts, we all hurt.  When one grieves, we all grieve.  Christ looks down from the cross and says to each of us, "This is your brother and this is your sister."

Let’s act like family. A real family.  A functional family that laughs and weeps together.  A family that pulls together under the leadership and love of our Parent.

I want to do more than feel bad.  Father God – please help me have the courage to be the sister that you’ve taught me to be in our family.

http://www.savedarfur.org/action/resources/