The Thanks I Get

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“Her shoes are nowhere to be found!”

 

“What?” I said aghast, not really believing that Bree’s nice tennis shoes were really swiped just like that.

 

The youth group volunteer and I continued the frantic search around the front entrance of our “empowerment center,” a place set in a poor Indonesian neighborhood, designed to empower people out of poverty.  Tonight we had just held a party there for homeless teenagers who live around our city’s town square.  We played games with them, taught them some English, fed them, and honored their graduation from a free graphic design class we offered to them.   We clapped and cheered when the ones of them who completed the course stood to receive their certificates.  It was a lively night of celebration.

 

After the meal, the 18 honored guests shuffled their way out of our empowerment center to the waiting public transportation mini-van that we had rented for them.  As per Indonesia custom, both ragged street beggar and wealthy ex-pat teenager had slipped off their shoes before entering our building at the start of the party, and now it was time to find their footwear amid a tall mountain of 40 pairs of sandals and shoes. 

 

Apparently some of our new friends thought this would be a great opportunity to upgrade.  We waved the guests goodbye, the van drove them back to the town square and we started cleaning the party’s aftermath.  That’s when the shoe search started.  As we were looking for the first girl’s tennis shoes, another youth group member approached me.  “I can’t find mine either,” he said dejected.

 

“Oh, Willy, I’m so sorry.”

 

I felt a rise of anger in me.  You mean to tell me the very people we threw this party for—these poor street kids—stole two pairs of tennis shoes right off our front porch?  How is the youth group going to feel about this, especially the barefooted ones?  Will their parents be angry at me? This is the thanks I get? 

 

All of these thoughts swirled through my head as I continued the fruitless search, grasping at some unlikely scenario that the two pairs were simply misplaced.  But deep down I knew better.  I imagined those shoes were tucked away inside a tattered backpack and riding back to the town square even as we searched.

 

Before the event, I read to the youth group this statement from Jesus: “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:12-14).

 

“You guys are going to be blessed tonight,” I promised the youth group as we were gathering together all the boxes of fried rice.  “Jesus said so.”

 

And yet, especially for two members of our youth group, they weren’t blessed. They were robbed.

 

The shoe theft was an initiation of sorts for these teenagers into the world on serving the poor.  It’s something that sounds very romantic—“serving the poor”—until you spend a lot of time around poor people.  Some of them can be lazy, manipulative and sinful just like all of us can.  They can even steal your shoes.  After getting burned a few times, it’s easy to keep a radio talk show host distance from poor people and judge them as maybe too lazy to help themselves.  That’s why the poor are easy to avoid—we seldom run in to them unless we are intentional.

 

Also if you are serving the poor because you are waiting to get positive feedback from them, you are going to be disappointed.  I’ve talked to many relief workers frustrated that while they worked hard in the hot sun to build houses for people displaced by some cataclysmic natural disaster, the people they were serving were just sitting under the shade and passively watching.   It infuriated them.   So forget about getting a Mother Theresa warm fuzzy all the time.

 

Another bad motivation—if you’re serving the poor to assuage some materialistic guilt, you’re not going to make it for the long haul either. Look at these wretched poor people!   How can we drive these nice cars and they have to walk everywhere?  How can we eat in nice restaurants when they barely have enough to eat?  That kind of motivation doesn’t last very long, maybe long enough to throw a few coins at a social Santa in front of a mall for an annual shopping spree.  But it’s not sustainable for the long haul.  Human compassion is a very low octane fuel. 

 

That’s why the motivation for serving the poor and broken has got to be God’s heart to serve the poor and broken.  The high octane fuel we need for the job is the heart of God.  He loves the poor.  He wants to lift them.  We can continually plug into that power source, no matter how much our emotions wane.  We may even feel nothing, and we can be honest with that.  “Lord, I don’t feel like getting into the complexities of needs in the lives of the poor. But I know you love them and want to lift them.  Please infuse me with your desires for them.”

 

The poor and needy are well, very needy.  Ever read Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goat ?   The hungry, the thirsty, strangers, the sick and prisoners are all featured prominently in it—those are some needy folks.  Their lives are complicated.  They can drain us.  They can even deceive us.  That’s why it’s so important to keep going back to Jesus for a refill of our hearts until they are overflowing again.

 

What I said to the youth group last week was true: “You are going to be blessed!”  I just shouldn’t have added the “tonight” part.   My timing was off—Jesus never promised immediate returns.  He did promise, “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”  In other words, one day this youth group will feel the pleasure of God and the applause of heaven for throwing a banquet for these street beggars.  It will be well worth it on that day.

 

Serving the poor for an audience of One.  Feeling the pleasure of God and His very own joy for lifting the ones He loves.  That’s worth a couple of pair of sneakers.

 

Relief and Redemption

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Eight-year-old Dika twists around in his wheel chair, trying to hold his head up enough to get a good look at us.  He smiles.

 

By the look of the bumpy roads our team traveled to get to his house, I don’t think his wheelchair ever leaves the front porch.  He pretty much stays put in this simple village home and is cared for by his mother and relatives.

 

Today their house is full.  Seven other families have made it their headquarters after the mountain they call their home exploded in fury last week.  Eruption after eruption from Mt. Merapi has left them all stressed out and wondering about their futures.  Their livelihoods as farmers, already hand-to-mouth in normal times, have become exceedingly difficult as no one knows when the farming can resume with gray ash in the air and ground.

 

Even in their hardship they welcome our team of eleven just as they have welcomed the seven other families.  They roll out the thin thatch mats on the concrete floor for us that the evacuated families use as mattresses.

 

We are happy to find this family and a place to give out some of our food supplies and equipment we have brought with our city, just eight hours away.

 

Our local host who brought us here has known this family for a while and has already been reaching out to them with Christ’s love.  He has already prayed for Dika’s healing and after our long conversation asks me to lead out in another prayer for this precious little boy, whose body is half paralyzed and shrunken.

 

I ask permission to these M*slim people to pray for Dika in the name of Isa Al Masih, the Arabic name for Jesus.  They gladly consent and hold their hands out palms up in their traditional prayer fashion.  As a team we pray a heartfelt prayer for little Dika’s healing, and are disappointed when we don’t see any immediate answer.

 

We chat more with family members and our host makes plans of when he can bring the extra food and supplies by.  They are grateful.  As our team puts on our shoes back on to leave, I notice a Javanese woman standing in the hallway crying. I ask her what’s wrong and she looks embarrassed and says nothing.   I ask if she has any problems we can pray for her about.

 

“I don’t have any problems at all,” she says and tries hard to smile to cover up her tears.  After some more questions I find out she is Dika’s aunt, and can’t control her emotions that some strangers have just prayed for her handicapped nephew.

 

Then I notice a woman behind me who is crying even more.  Same answer that she has not a problem in the world.  It’s Dika’s mom.

 

The three of us still in the house pray for her as well, that God would comfort her and give her strength.  I tell her I know firsthand how difficult it is to raise a special needs child, and get teary eyed myself when I share about God’s faithfulness to my own family.  I tell her I have witnessed an ongoing miracle over the years.

 

By now the rest of the team has made their way down the dusty road back to our mini-bus.  They’re probably wondering what is taking so long but have gotten used to moving at a slower village pace during these three days.

 

I remember that I have an Indonesian New Testament in my backpack.  “This is a book about how Isa can do miracles,” I tell Dika’s mom, who is still crying.  I randomly open to a page that recounts a story of healing, and one page over there is another story of Jesus healing a paralyzed man.

 

“Keep praying for Dika in the name of Isa, and read this book to build your faith, okay Ibu?” I suggest.   She nods her head up and down, still unable to speak.

 

By now the three of us left behind really need to get going and catch up to the rest of our teammates.  Dika is still stuck at home, the volcano continues to smolder and their family is still is need.  Yet I believe God is bigger and better than all that to work both relief and redemption into their lives.

 

Pray for Dika.  Pray for the families like his whose lives have been upended by this cataclysmic disaster.  Pray comfort for the families of the 156 people who have died so far and strength for the close to 350,000 people living in soccer stadiums or muddy refugee camps, bored and stressed and waiting and wondering about their futures.  Pray that that believers all over these islands would rise up to serve them.  Pray that this would be the finest hour of the church in Java.

 

Our limited help, which can feel so small against such overwhelming need, makes a big difference in the lives of the people we encounter.  On our last trip there we met one family camped out of a church.  They had been living on nothing but coffee for a few days as their village wasn’t on the government’s danger zone list and they had lost their jobs so there was no daily income.  They were still evacuating themselves to lower elevations every night out of fear of another eruption, and were feeling weak with hunger.  The food that we brought to them was an urgent answer to their prayers.

 

We are making plans now for a follow-up trip at the end of this month to this dynamically changing region with its shifting centers of need.  We want to bring more medicine, food, supplies and practical help to these displaced people, whether in the rebuilding stage of their villages or the wait-it-out stage in the refugee camps.  That depends on Merapi and whether her fury has subsided yet.

 

How much help we bring them depends on you.  If you would like help us purchase relief supplies for this next disaster relief trip, please make out a check to “Mustard Seed International” and write “Mt. Merapi Response Fund” on the memo line.  Then send to:

 

Mustard Seed International

P.O. Box 20188

Charleston SC 29413

 

Thanks for praying for both relief and redemption for people living around Mt. Merapi .  And thanks for walking with those of us serving here in the Ring of Fire.

 

With Christ,

Mike O’Quin