As I collect some of my thoughts regarding my trip to India (some of which I will continue to post here) I thought it would be appropriate to share the  lyrics a song that will appear on “Y,” the 3rd EP in the CMY(K) series. It’s an adaptation of the list Mahatma Gandhi made of  the traits to be the most perilous to humanity:

* Wealth without Work
* Pleasure without Conscience
* Science without Humanity
* Knowledge without Character
* Politics without Principle
* Commerce without Morality
* Worship without Sacrifice

My version goes something like this:

Lord, You know we’ve seen it
Wealth without the work
And pleasure with no conscience 
Both plagues upon the earth

We are overwhelmed; we are overcome
And yet we live in expectation

Lord you know we’ve lived it 
Religion with no cost
Worship that means nothing
Because it does not bear a cross

 We are overwhelmed; we are overcome
And yet we live in expectation

 Science with no heart
Knowledge with no character
Politics without a sense of place
And we’re selling things without a thought
For what we need
And what really cost.

We are overwhelmed; we are overcome
And yet we live in expectation 

Some of you already know that I am in India with Compassion International. I have the great privilege of visiting Compassion church partners in several locations and seeing what Compassion’s work looks like here.  One of the greatest opportunities this affords me is visiting the homes of specific children who are in and benefitting from Compassion’s work. This is a short account of one such visit just today.
—— 

Deephalder is five and a half years old and lives with his grandparents. He also lives with a rare blood disease called “Thalassemia” and requires a blood transfusion every six weeks. Each transfusion costs 1600 Rupee which is 80% of his grandparents’ household income. The expense of treating thalassemia is the primary reason why, upon receiving the diagnosis when Deep was only five months old, both parents left him. 

When Deep’s grandmother had finished telling us about the disorder, the cost of transfusion and the day of work either she or Deep’s grandfather has to miss when they take the four-hour bus ride to the hospital, we asked how they were able to afford the other necessities of life on top of Deep’s treatment.  She glowed as she told us that Compassion had picked up the cost of the transfusion.  That means that, somewhere in the U.S., a young man or woman is sacrificing $1.23 a day to ensure that, along with basic medical care, an education and food, Deep can continue to receive his treatment.

Money enough to buy a daily cup of coffee is quite literally saving the life of a five-year old child.

This is why I partner with Compassion; their work through local churches in the poorest areas of the world puts children from those places within arms reach on you and I. And because our small sacrifice is has such deep and lasting impact in the hands of the church partners Compassion assists. 

If you don’t already, consider doing so yourself by sponsoring a child. 

My wife and I share the great joy of overseeing and leading a community of people called the Justice League in my hometown of Concord, CA.  Put simply, the Justice League is a community in Concord, CA committed to the work of Justice. Our focuses (or “foci”) are Local Poverty, Public Schools, Human Trafficking/Responsible Consumerism and Global Poverty (with a select group of Global Partnerships). At a recent Justice League gathering, I shared a video of Gideon Strauss speaking at Gordon College on the topic of Justice.  His talk was entitled “Justice Is Not Optional,” but I highlighted something I found more intriguing about his talk; the idea that Justice is relational.

During his talk, Gideon defines Justice as “treating creatures according to how God created them; (forging) relationships with God’s creatures in such a way as to give them their due as what they are.”  Gideon is suggesting that Justice is relational; that in order to offer justice to someone, I must have a knowledge of who that person is intended to be in full bloom, unhindered by poverty, oppression or whatever obstacle lies in their path.

I find that idea very challenging.

Gideon goes on to say “Justice cannot be reduced to some kind of mute, rough equality.”  It is this “rough equality” I generally default to in my thinking about Justice.  Most often, even my most sincere emotional response to injustice amounts to something like “Let’s find some surplus money among us and throw it at this ‘situation’ in order to fix it.”  It is an easier kind of justice in the long run, since it costs very little.

I’m beginning to realize that the justice I normally envision is mostly a conceptual blanket which only hides the dappled, shifting landscape of creation and particularly humanity, but does nothing to legitimately heal and repair.  It’s the kind of justice that emotionally and eagerly responds to distress with the generalized idea that “we” (a word which also lacks clarity) have to make this “right” when we may not have spent the time to orient ourselves in order to know what “right” looks like in a particular place or for a particular person.

The kind of justice Gideon describes includes (in fact, requires) an intricate and even personal knowledge of the systems, cities and persons in need of justice, as well as a keen awareness of the limitations, needs and presumptions of those working for it.  A person living in Concord, CA, for instance, would need to know the city of Concord in order to do justice in Concord or for its people. But, knowing a city is an enormous endeavor; requiring great amounts of time and patience.  It is not the kind of thing one envisions doing in the moment he or she is moved to action by the sudden knowledge that Concord’s “Monument Corridor” is one of the fastest growing poverty traps in California…

(Continued in part II coming soon.  In the meantime… feel free to work on this.)

Marty Caldwell works for Young Life International.  He is the Senior Vice President of Young Life International South Division, which includes Africa, South-America, Mars and Pluto (even though it is no longer recognized as a planet).  This is his story and I’ve asked permission to recreate it.  I’ve not received that permission but expect it any day now. So,.. here’s the story:

A few years ago Marty received a phone call from a young man in Monrovia, Liberia named James.  James had read about Young Life and had a strong impression that God intended to use him to start a chapter of Young Life in war-torn Liberia.  This phone call was placed during the last phases of a 14-year long civil war which had rendered many if not most of the living in their nation homeless and destitute.  On the phone, Marty shared with James about some of the complications of starting Young Life and the often lengthy process it can be.  James was determined and asked Marty to come visit Liberia to meet some of the people interested in getting YL off the ground.

During the course of the conversation, Marty periodically heard what sounded like gunfire on the other end of the line.  “Are you alright?” Mary would ask “that sounds like gunfire on your end.”  “Yes, I am fine” James replied, “I am under the table. Now, tell me more about what we need to do to bring Young Life to Liberia…”  Marty came to know later that James had intentionally traveled into an area of Monrovia where there were regular street battles (featuring rifles and grenades, that is… ) because he knew there was a phone there he could use.  This was an urgent phone call for James.  His sense was that God had spoken and that meant he was to act NOW.  He would not be denied.  His courage and confident faith moved Marty so that, not no long after that call, Caldwell found himself in Liberia talking with the community elders of about next steps in the direction of “Young Life Liberia.”

At one point near the end of Caldwell’s visit, he was gathered by a group of these men in order to pray together.  Among them was a man named Marvelous.  Yes.. his name is Marvelous.

(side note: Can you imagine meeting a guy named Marvelous at a party?

YOU: “Hello, my name is Bob.”
HIM: “Well, hey there Bob, my name is Marvelous.  This is my wife Fantastic, my son Amazing and our daughter Muchsmarterthanyou.”)

Hand in hand with the rest of these men, Marvelous bowed his head to pray.  Now I’ve thought often about what kind of prayer I might have offered up if I had found myself one of a handful of men who believed he had been called to begin the restoration of my nation after watching it turned inside out for a decade and a half.  All the strategic and tactical obstacles.. Fund-raising, training, developing basic infrastructure… Where would I even begin such a prayer, with so much work ahead of me, and all of it daunting.  Maybe I would pray something profound such as “ummm..” or “uuuh” to start with.   I’d throw in a couple “OLordJesus” and “DearFatherGod” in there between the umms and uhhs.  Later on I would mix that up with a “LordFatherJesusOGod” or even a “GodFatherLordGod.”  Then I’d likely move on to powerful movements of prayer like silently blinking or looking around for someone else to pray instead of me.

Needless to say, Marvelous went a different route.  His head bowed, he prayed…

“Jesus, thank you for my shoes.
Jesus, thank you for my pants.
Jesus, thank you for food to eat today.
Jesus, thank you for a warm place to sleep tonight.”

This is the prayer of a man who knows who his Source is.  Seeing that way allows him to hope for and even expect great and miraculous works in a way that those of us who take our shoes for granted struggle to.  Having my eyes set more regularly on what I perceive as lack in my life, I lose sight of my own provision as evidence of God’s goodness and blessing.  In other words, when I consider that 1/6 of the human family lives on about a dollar a day, the fact that I have shoes on my feet at all seems a bit less humdrum.  In fact, knowing that this has always been the case with me and that I have usually had a choice of which shoes to wear on a given day begins to seem less like “what simply is” and more like and extravagant blessing.

Last christmas, my wife and I sent a small financial gift to one of the boys we sponsor.  Compassion International staff in Otovalo, Ecuador took him out to purchase soccer cleats with that gift and mailed us a picture of Roberto (our boy) holding his new shoes.  It was a great pic; Roberto holding up bright green shoes, wearing a pair of hand-made sandals he had worn through months before and smiling as if he had just graduated from Harvard. His obvious joy was more than quaint and cute; It was profound, humanizing and grounding for both Amy and I.

Perhaps there is something more than just the beauty of a simple and thankful heart in those words “.. Jesus thank you for my shoes…”? Perhaps those words reflect the kind of seeing that makes every great work (such as the restoration of a nation) even possible at all.  The words of Marvelous’ prayer, like the smile on Roberto’s face, are the fruit of a vine whose seed was buried and broken by its circumstances.  But this is a vine that, because of the goodness of the soil in which it took root, could not be undone by hardship, be it hunger or war or abandonment.  This is a vine which was born of the seeds of the kingdom of God…

-And the Kingdom of God is like a Liberian man who drove into the midst of terrible violence because he believed that hope for his country could be found on a telephone there.

-The Kingdom of God is like a Young Life Staffer who took that phone call from a man he did not know and responded to a request his organization was not prepared for.

-The Kingdom of God is like 200 Liberian teenagers showing up at the first ever Young Life camp in their country to hear, believe and respond to the message that that God had not forgotten them despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

-The Kingdom of God is like scores of other Liberian kids walking for 2 full days in order to get to this same camp because there had not been room enough for them on the bus.

And the birth of this same Kingdom here in America begins in the very same way as it begins in Liberia or Kenya or Mumbai or Manilla.  Which is to say that somewhere between (and in the meeting of) the numbing abundance of America and the hopelessness of the destitute poor is a place where we all bow our heads, see the shoes on our feet and for very different reasons find a thankfulness in our hearts so complete that it redefines our entire being..

…because..

-The Kingdom of God is like an American man who, upon hearing this story for the first time fell to his knees in front of his closet whispering “Jesus, thank you for my shoes… ” who raised his eyes the roof of the home he lived in, thinking of the friends and family he had, kneeling in the pants he chose from among others to wear that day and wept “Jesus, thank you for everything.”