The Last, the Lost, the Least: Part Two

For the first post in this series, click here.



We all, we all wear dignity. It covers the strong, the weak. We all, we all wear dignity. Even the last, the lost, the least.

The next morning I found myself in Peter’s SUV along with Adam and two other guys named Seth and Mark. Our team had split up in order to satisfy some of the church’s more practical needs. My particular group was headed to the home of a widow whose husband had previously pastored at the church. She was preparing to sell her house, and a team of five stalwart, young men was just the thing she needed. After some difficulties in instructions delayed our coming by half an hour, we arrived at a modest but well-kempt suburban home and set to work with gusto.
“Is there anything I can do?” I offered after the others set about vacuuming and moving furniture. Within seconds, a rag and dust spray appeared in my hand. It was not the most manly activity by any stretch, but a legitimate way to help, and I determined to do as much as I could as well as I could. We labored on for the better part of the morning, stopping on occasion for a drink of lemonade or tea. At one point, my work took me upstairs, where Peter labored to clean the bathroom.

“You know, I think one reason we’re so antagonistic towards the poor is because of their liberal tendencies.” I said, recalling my own reactions the day before,

“Like, it’s the conservative mindset to just let them help themselves get out of it.”

“Yeah,” he grunted in agreement, “I think that’s part of it.”

“But that isn’t the Christian position. We’re called to love these people no matter what. And it’s tough.”

“I feel you there,” he replied, “I see homeless people in Burbank, where I’m from, all the time, and it’s like, my gut reaction is to think they’re just liberals who don’t care if they’re there or not.” I nodded and continued dusting, lost in thought.

Soon enough, we completed every task the widow could think of, and prepared to return to First EV Free Church. I smiled as she gave us all hugs and expressed her gratitude. Serving this woman, a needy sister in Christ, brought joy and satisfaction easily enough. Hopefully we would be doing a few more simple work sessions like this before the trip ended.

The afternoon featured a return to 12^th Place, this time after the schools got out. “I can do this, I can do this…Wait!” I checked myself, “no, I can’t do this, at least not without You Jesus. God, help me right now.” Just as before, the girls quickly assumed reading and teaching positions on the blankets, this time outnumbered by the children. I walked over to where Kat had started assigning students to children.

“Here, I’ll take this guy,” I indicated a boy six or seven years old. “What’s your name?”

He mumbled something quietly, so I repeated it as best as I could and took him to a stack of books.

“Which one do you want?” He glanced briefly at each book as I shuffled through them, finally placing his pudgy thumb on a Magic School Bus story. I smiled as I recalled reading such books nearly a decade ago, and positioned myself beside him on the blanket.

When we finished the story, I noticed a circle of chubby kids and college students bouncing a kickball around.

“Hey,” I said, “You wanna go play ball with them?” He paused for a moment, looked up at me, and nodded shyly.

“Okay, let’s go!” Together, we ran over to the group. I glanced down at the chunky little boy, with his short black hair and gap-toothed smile. It would not have become me to use the term out loud, but he was kind of cute.

The rest of the afternoon at 12^th Place passed in a blur. I remember playing another soccer game in the alley and getting chased around by a giggling little girl with a puppet on her hand. The books in my arms on the walk home hardly felt like a burden, and I laughed with the rest of the group as everyone recounted their experience. “God, thank you for this. Thank you that there was something there. Thank you for showing me that these people really are special.”

The Last, the Lost, the Least: Part One

I recently wrote an autobiographical account of my Outreach Week experience last semester at The Master's College, and after having it critiqued in one of my classes, I'm going to be posting it in a four part series over the next two weeks. So without further ado, enjoy!

Live a life of privilege pushing back the last, the lost, the least of these to dull the edge of conscience with conceit. Live a life and see the world. Feel its weight on the shoulders of the least of these. It spins and twirls without rest or relief.

I hummed the Relient K song and adjusted the sleeping bag under my arm while attempting to sip a Mountain Dew. My duffle bag slipped from my other arm as I raised the drink. Frustrated, I opted to forgo the soda’s pleasure until I had descended the stairs between the dorms and main campus at The Master’s College and deposited my baggage at the gazebo where everyone had gathered. There were about thirty of us in all, students who had decided to go to First Evangelical Free Church in downtown Los Angeles for the school’s annual Outreach Week. I cast a wary eye about the group, spotting several people who I’d met before—TJ Morsey, Peter Mockary, Marcus LeGault, Lee Davis, and of course, Adam Carmichael. Adam had been my WOW (Week of Welcome) leader a few months before, and had also been selected to lead this group. I raised my eyebrows as I surveyed the group; a few pretty girls had apparently decided to join the First EV Free team too. Four days of serving the church in an impoverished area with great people—it looked like God had some good thing in store.

Three hours later, we all stood on a sidewalk under the blazing sun. I wrinkled my nose in disgust at the smell of urine behind the dumpster, wiped away the sweat that had begun to bead on my brow, and tried to focus on what our guide was saying. The senior Pastor at First EV Free, Douglas Moore, was giving us a brief tour of the area surrounding the church. The church was situated in the urban heart of Lost Angeles, surrounded by the 110 Freeway, a police building, and a neighborhood of overpriced apartments. Just a block or two away ran a street called Pico Boulevard, dotted with small markets, Spanish signs, and run down shops. On the other side of the highway, less than a mile away, towered the Staples Center—home of the Lakers basketball team. I continued to glance around the city as Pastor Doug spoke of the violence, drugs, and poverty that dominated the region. For ever sports car that drove by passed a man pushing a shopping cart. I marveled at how the most luxurious and desolate places in America could exist in such close proximity of each other.

The tour dragged on for another thirty minutes as Pastor Doug continued explaining how landlords packed the houses, often with illegal aliens, and charged them ridiculously high prices. He spoke of how there had been shootings and rampant drug use and prostitution here in the past, and how stores took advantage of the poor by forcing you to buy two gallons of milk (that they didn’t have enough space in their refrigerator for), or pay far too much for one gallon. Every few minutes, a grizzled old man or woman would approach and start mumbling something in Spanish, presumably asking for money. I glanced at my new plaid shorts and lightly tanned skin, fingering the cell phone and wallet in my pocket. The contrast was vivid. I didn’t belong here, none of us did.

We arrived back at the church, taking a few moments to pray before being introduced to Kathryn Lohr. Kat, as everyone called her, studied at Master’s but lived down here in the Nehemiah House, an boarding house supported by the college and church that offered students the chance to live in the neighborhoods here and minister to the poor on a regular basis.

“Welcome guys, it’s so awesome to have you all here.” She smiled and went on to explain that we had two options for serving the rest of that afternoon: helping out with the church’s after-school program or working with neighborhood children at a street called 12^th place. I sat there numbly as she picked out ten volunteers to help with the church’s program. The rest of us gathered up blankets, balls, picture books, hula hoops, and other children’s items and headed off to what I figured was the after-school hangout several blocks away.

We marched enthusiastically down to 12^th place in a matter of minutes, ready to finally do some hands on service, only to find four or five Hispanic children waiting for us on a small patch of grass between the sidewalk and apartments. I found out later that school had not yet gotten out at the time, so we really had no point in being there, but we could not turn back. Immediately, Kat and several of the girls in the group swooped down upon these kids, outnumbering them two to one but eager to help them with homework, read them books, and love them in any way possible. I leaned against a tree with my hands in my pockets. The children’s parents stood several yards off, surveying us coldly. Swallowing and diverting my eyes from their hard glances, I walked over to a circle of guys from our group who had begun to kick a soccer ball around. My stomach knotted, I had never played much soccer, and my beat-up gray loafers were by no means conducive to athletics, but I joined in anyway. It was better than twiddling my thumbs while all the girls labored over a few kids. Minutes passed like hours as I gently kicked the ball back and forth around the circle, waiting for some poor person to drop in my lap. “What am I doing here?” I thought. Peter, TJ, Marcus, and Adam had all gone to help with the church, so I kept silent, not in the mood for conversation anyway.

Nearly half an hour passed before more children began showing up. I forced a smile, trying to do at least something productive as several kids joined our circle and began passing the ball around. As more children joined, Faris, one of the older children in the group named Curvan proposed that we play a soccer game in an open alley behind the apartments. I jumped at the idea, finally something to do. We quickly formed into two roughly equal teams and started playing. I assumed the goalie position, watching the game and shouting out compliments to the children with as much care and love as I could muster. Most of them were overweight, surprising given the fact that most lived at or near the level of poverty. Occasionally a ball would come near me, but I contributed little for the most part. What good was this? Could a single pickup soccer game really do anything for these kids and their parents who couldn’t speak English? I pondered these things as the sun began to sink behind the houses and trees. After an hour or two, we picked up our supplies and began trudging back to the church, while the kids departed for their dirty, overcrowded homes. I sighed in hollow mixture of relief and confusion, shifting the basket of books from one shoulder to the other. We still had three more days of this?

Despite spending much of the day in the sun and having a thin mattress that softened the hard sanctuary floor, I tossed and turned in my sleeping bag that night. “God, I can’t do this, I don’t want to be here.” I thought, “How can I be so cold? How can this be so unfulfilling? Please, please, help me to love these people, because right now I don’t. Right now I don’t want anything to do with this. I need Your grace, God. I need the cross…”

Patience

So I've written something for a class of mine here, and I'll probably end up posting it. It's not like I've forgotten about this blog, it's too young to die, but look for something big in the next day or two. . . after it's been critiqued by my class.

In the meantime, read through 1 John 4. It's been owning me lately.

Sovereign over the Plumbing?

Yep, leave it to a Master's College student to think about life and theology when the plumbing goes out in his dorm. I was (and am) very annoyed at not being able to wash my hands or take a shower tomorrow, but life goes on and God is still good.

God is still good. Strange as it may seem, I think little inconveniences like this are important for us and can be a blessing. It is far too easy for us to get comfortable in the comforts, prosperity, and security of the modern world. Every once in a while, it's good to get a little slap on the hand reminding me that life really is fickle.

Seriously, everyone is so quick to talk about the frailty of life, but it seems we're rarely, if ever, prepared to confront this reality when life really does take a turn for the worse. It isn't only a number in the newspaper that gets their homes destroyed by a hurricane. It wasn't only Job who lost everything in a matter of days. God allows things like that to happen, and there's no telling when hard times are on the way.

I know that losing the plumbing for a day is bad at all. I can deal with it without having to earnestly seek God in prayer and humbly ask "why?" And I don't need a sermon,hymn, or bible verse to get through this emotionally. The point remains, though, what if it's the power next time? Or the internet? Or my financial aid?

I firmly believe that God is sovereign over the plumbing in Slight Hall. I know it happened for a reason, so perhaps we should try to get something out of it. Perhaps we should look to the grace of God to get us through this thing without any anger or impatience. Perhaps we should take comfort in the fact that even this minuscule trial has been custom tailored for each and every one of us by the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

That's a pretty amazing thought. And if God can somehow make me more into the image of Christ by knocking out the plumbing for a few hours, may I praise Him all the more!

You Can't Judge a Book by It's Cover

As Mr. Challies demonstrates here. My first thought? "Scathing review coming." My last thought? "Hmmm, just might have to check this out."

Da' Truth and Life Conference

Yeah, it's been pretty freakin' awesome. J-Mac, Dr. Lutzer, and Dr. Ferguson, how much better does it get?

Granted, it isn't exactly dealing with an issue that I'm currently struggling with or having uncertainties about, but really good stuff nonetheless. And it kind of makes you think. There's no way I have this issue nailed down and that I've completely got this whole suffering thing under control. I mean, life may not be tough right now, but sooner or later, trials and pain are going to come. All God's people are, in one way or another, predestined to go through tribulations.

When said difficulties do come, though, by God's grace I'll be able to look back to this conference, and see that, no matter what is going on, God is somehow working all this out for good. Yeah, life can be pretty painful at times, but how awesome is it (as I've been reminded at this conference) to be able to rest in the fact that God is sovereign? My hurts aren't an abuse of free will or a lack of foresight on God's part. Nope, He planned them out for me, and there will be no reason for me to give in to sin, and despair, and hate.

Philosophical Tidbit of the Break

Philip Johnson writes in his brilliant yet all-but-over-my-head book, Reason in the Balance:

"(A) theory that is the product of a mind can never adequately explain the mind the produced the theory. . . Once we try to explain the mind as a product of its own discoveries, we are in a hall of mirrors with no exit."


That simple thought gave me great encouragement and comfort when I read it. In order to explain our own minds, the "theory" that created it must be beyond our comprehension. In other words, there must be a certain element of the truth that we cannot possibly understand.


"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 'For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?'" (Romans 11:33-34)