But baby Joselin still lives
in Chinatal, a village in the Peten with thatched-roof huts, a
river for a source of water that requires the women to walk for
long distances carrying heavy loads to avail themselves of its
sustaining power, and mosquitoes that torment and torture and
carry the constant threat of malaria in this agonizingly hot climate.
The people who live here are still subsistence farmers who cultivate
their corn and beans on tired, worn-out land because they must
eat and there is no other work of any kind. If the crops are bad
their malnourished bodies only become a little more so. But we
feel good about ourselves. At least baby Joselin has a complete
lip even if she still has a gaping hole in the roof of her mouth
and gaping holes in any promise of a future different from what
she is now living as she and two-thirds of the world’s people
continue to suffer.
This is the time of year when we like to make lists of all the
good things we have done. It fulfills for us our need to feel
good. We collect gifts for poor children, food baskets for poor
families. We show by our actions how we love the Lord while we
tote up how many souls we have saved and we feel good about ourselves.
We want to help the unfortunate ones and we argue among ourselves
about what should be done as we become the focus of our own concerns
and not those we claim to love so much, while two-thirds of the
world’s people continue to suffer. We read our Bibles and
analyze the words and define them as if we knew what was in the
minds of the biblical writers while others do not. We end up creating
barriers between people rather than eliminating them and, in the
guise of praising God, we praise ourselves for our cleverness
and intellect while two-thirds of the world’s people continue
to suffer. But we feel good about ourselves. We give money to
causes or organizations that represent what we feel are important
or we hire people to carry out our wishes. We maintain our sanitary
distance and if we are not pleased we simply and immediately withdraw
our money and redirect it to someplace where it will make us feel
better. We worry about our portfolios as we think about doing
something to change a world we know is not fair, but we delay
until we have time available and a greater portfolio. We have
a need to serve, so we find a people that will enable us to be
faithful to our call while we enjoy feeling good about ourselves.
But after a while we get to know them—maybe too well. We
find they are flawed: they manipulate money or people to their
own advantage rather than the common good; they lust for money
or position; they lie; they harbor ill will toward their neighbors.
We realize they are too much like us and we cannot allow that—we
cannot face that. We need them; we need them to need us—to
make us feel good and how can we do that if we see ourselves in
them? So we visit other countries or other needful groups to fulfill
our need to serve. We become nothing more than spiritual tourists;
we love deeply but do not get involved deeply. But we can at least
add another place to our now longer list of good works. There
is to be a troop build-up in Iraq: more troops, more war, more
deaths, and no one feels safer and two-thirds of the world’s
people continue to suffer.
We ache for happy endings at this Christmas season. We have seen
enough of the crucifixion and it is time for resurrection and
we sense the promise of it as we long to feel good. And baby Joselin,
a little more than a year old now, walking better every day with
barely the hint of a scar on her new lip, faces her second Christmas
abandoned not only by her father but now by her mother as well.
But we will find some way to feel good—we have to—while
two-thirds of the world’s people continue to suffer.
May we truly become the people we want to be. May the peace of
God and the promise of Christmas be with all of you.
Roger and Gloria
The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
62
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