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| photo by David Dean |
"Life on the mission field," he said, "it's the kind of life that takes it's toll on a family of missionaries. It's how my father died: working on his feet; dying on this feet. It's how my mother will sacrifice the rest of her life."
what kind of life is this?
My friend Joel and I talk about his parent's mission in the Philippines, his fathers passing, his mother's newly needed kidney. She needs a surgery that is too costly for their situation. We are talking about what to do?
The problem with the Philippines is that they require all the money upfront, paid in-full before the surgery. It's not like living in the United States where we get the surgery and figure out how to pay for it later. As a missionary on the front lines of life and the world she has no insurance, no savings, no major organization backing her work. She has almost no one protecting her life from the waves about to come, which have been waiting to crest and drop into the reality of her life.
would we have died in the land
"Would that we died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt..."
This is the cry of the Israelites just after they crossed the Red Sea. They watch the fiercest men, Egyptian soldiers, wrapped in gear, and intent on destroy their kids. These men wanted to take their kids lives in front of their eyes. Instead, these same men were washed away to their death by the hand of God. He saved them from a very real destruction.
persistent pain in the world
There are many ways that God has saved us. This is the story of the life of a believer. God saved us when we should be dead. If this is your story, you know very well what I am talking about. If this is not your story, I hope that it becomes your story.
And yet...and yet, what do we do with continued suffering after the new life? God gives us salvation, his life in our being, his work in the middle of our feeble attempt to destroy our lives. He moves to save us. This is grace. And still we experience pain, lost of a spouse by betrayal or death. We have surgeries, loose children, watch our houses be taken in foreclosure, have our job or income source shrivel up to the size of a peanut, find that it's hard to turn on the news and hear the latest war or natural disaster. I mean, just think about dirty water in the world and it becomes almost overwhelming. I get overwhelmed - wondering what God is up to? I wonder how to help? And yet, there's the persistent pain in the world.
bread from heaven; water from the rock
Look at what God provides after the Red Sea...bread from heaven; water from the rock.
The end of the Israelites cry goes like this: "(You should have let us die) when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." Exodus 16:3
I understand this cry. It sounds like this: if God is still God, why do I experience pain; if God is sovereign why are there still poor people? Why are there still children dying around the world?
God answers: I give you my bread from heaven, my water from the rock.
God moves to make it right
He tells them: I will give you bread and you will know I am the Lord your God. And he does this, it drops from heaven, lands on the desert flour, enough to care for them. Can you imagine if they'd not taken it? Not eaten till they were filled? It would be insane to refuse it. Yet, the Bible is in front of us everyday, describing us of who God is, that he is sovereign, that he cares for the poor and the needy, that he weeps when they weep. He cries when we cry. And when my friend's mother cannot afford a kidney surgery he knows and wishes it was not this way. I mean, we made the world this way in all our striving and fighting; God's the one moving to make it right.
the pain and struggle
It's not just his bread; it's also his water. His life quenches our thirst. In the West our thirst tends to be emotional, our problem is more about identity, our struggle is that we don't know who we are in the middle of all the stuff we do have. The pain we experience is our narcissistic inability to be narcissistic enough.
hardened to the fact that we are thirsty
And yet, as the Israelites question God in their midst - "If God is here, why are we still thirsty?" - Moses strikes a rock and out of the rock pours fresh spring water. Our hearts are this hard. We often cannot see God, much less other people, because we are hardened to the fact that we are thirsty.
AB.
*written by Abraham Bates - Photo by David Dean Photography - Copyright AbrahamBates.com
