And Another Thing . . . Refugee Family
This week, much of my time was spent in preparing for the arrival of our Refugee family, and so this morning I thought I would send out an abbreviated blog.
The Gathering Community rallied this week to furnish an apartment with beds, dressers, table and chairs, couch and recliners, food, clothes and much more. On Friday the stuff we collected and the people we were giving them to all came together. Lots of smiles and nods, faces straining to understand, the joy of watching a baby play in her new home all coalesced as we listened to the interpreter and tried to make new friends. It is awkward to sit in a room where the differences between us are so large. There is a language barrier and a huge cultural barrier. The interpreter is himself a refugee who came to Indy three years ago. Today he has learned English, works as a nursing assistant and volunteers for Exodus Refugee Immigration. He is excited about his new life and is already trying to pay it forward. He believes that he is the only one who speaks this language in the city.
I know very few of the particulars about these young ladies. I may never know much of their story. My assumption is that there were some very hard things that spurred this dramatic move. They stepped out in faith with the hope of finding a better life. Our gathering in their new apartment on Friday was an important step in this new adventure. As we were trying to get to know them, we asked if there was anything they would like to do in their new town. They answered, “We would like to worship.”
So, it turns out that in spite of all of the barriers, we have much in common. We love our children. We hope for better days. We laugh and cry, and we worship Jesus.
When we signed up to help a Refugee family relocate I believed there was a good chance we would be called to serve people who were from a different faith. My prayer was that we would faithfully serve whoever He brought us as an expression of his love and ours. And so he brought us sisters.
Our new sisters will be joining us at The Gathering this week. Come meet them and let’s join with them in worshiping the God who does such great things.
And that is all I have to say about that . . . for now.
And Another Thing . . . Love, Truth & Church
My parents were church goers. So when I was a kid, I went to church too. The church of my childhood was the non-instrumental Church of Christ. This was a great church to begin in because they were big on teaching young people about the Bible. Every Sunday night, all the children five and older were asked to come up front and share a verse they had memorized that week. The preacher would then quiz the kids about the Bible. I remember as a preschooler sitting with my parents and longing for the day when I could go up too. I learned a lot about the Bible in that church.
In fact, I enjoyed many things about the CoC. It was only when I was older and began to understand their take on biblical truth that I experienced a growing sense of estrangement. As a kid, I felt loved and included. I especially enjoyed listening to the a cappella singing. It was fun to hear men and women singing, from the shaped-note songbook, the harmonies to all of the old hymns. Shaped-notes were a now archaic musical notation system that made it easier to read and then sing harmony and our church would teach new members this system, as well as how to use a pitch pipe, and to lead hymns in 4/4 time. My early perspective was that shaped-notes were somehow more spiritual.
Superior spirituality was an underlying theme in my formative Christian journey—a theme that was subtle and somewhat insidious. The fact that it affected me the way that it did may have more to do with my weaknesses than any intention on the part of my teachers, but I nevertheless interpreted what I learned as “My group is right and everyone else is wrong.” My knowledge, my truth, nurtured a sense of moral superiority. Paul admonishes believers to, “speak the truth in love.”(Eph 4:15) This has always been a tricky thing to pull off. First Corinthians 8:1 says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” I fear that much of my early Biblical learning resulted in a puffing up rather than a building up. Love gets messy, but truth feels clean and clarifying. Love involves giving of our self and dealing with all of our own insecurities in the process. Truth is of the mind and insulates our feelings and elevates our perspective above the fray of frailty. The challenge is to marry the two. To speak truth in the midst of our relationships with an awareness of our mess and insecurity is the call of the church. Love without truth is blind. Truth without love has clarity, but it isolates. Truth spoken with love directs, connects and elevates.
In the parlance of the KJV, the church is called to be a peculiar people. We are to love one another and the world like Jesus does. Unfortunately, it has become a cliché that our culture is frustrated and at times even disgusted with the church. Much of the atheism creeping into today’s culture has, at its root, a hurt or disappointment with people who claimed to be followers of God. Many are open to Jesus but are leery of his people. Not all of this is the fault of the church, but a significant portion of those who now doubt the church have been shaped by an encounter with her truth untempered by her love. Second Corinthians 5:14 says “Christ’s love compels.” God’s love is what changes everything. It is what changed each of us who claim to be Christ-followers. It is what changed me.
The love I felt in the hearts of the good people of the CoC was the first taste of a reality I would continue to experience over and over again throughout my life. Later, I, too, witnessed hypocrisy and disappointment and doubted the truth of the Christian faith. It was the love of friends who were believers who showed me the reality of a God whose story I doubted, but whose love compelled.
God’s love draws and changes us.
God’s truth liberates and leads us.
God’s Son makes all things new.
And that is all I have to say about that . . . for now!
