She walked through my front door, my sweet muslim friend, with her head hanging...unable to look at me, barely able to utter her words. In all of our time together she had never asked me for anything. Today she did. She needed help. She needed money. She held her head in shame and uttered her request with tears in her eyes and desperation in her voice.
I was angry. No, not at my hurting friend. I was angry at the shame that she felt. I was angry at everything I have ever taken for granted . Angry because I have no idea what it is like to feel that shame and humiliation. I can never truly understand the desperation, the hopelessness, the fear, and the shame.
This morning I'm angry at the poverty that my precious friends endure here in Tanzania. But my mind shifts to America and again...I'm angry. I'm angry at the poverty. The poverty of spirit...maybe the worst kind because so many of us don't even know how deeply impoverished we are. We can't even ask for help because we have no idea the slum in which we live.
Poverty...manifested in such different ways in the two very different places that I call home. For some it's waking up everyday to the cries of their children and wondering how they will fill their bellies. For others it's that emptiness and hunger that can't be satisfied. We get more, we buy more, we make ourselves busy, we consume, we even give out of our abundance, but it's not enough. We wake up every day...hungry.
We are all hungry. We are all broken. We are all in need. No matter how our physical needs manifest themselves we all have one thing in common...we need to be rescued.
From the beginning of time man has needed to be rescued and from the beginning of time God has had a Rescuer planned. When the first sin entered this world we became broken and impoverished people in need of rescue. In the west, we smother, quench and exchange the glory of God for things; but our gracious God will not allow human beings to completely suppress our sense of Him and our need for rescue. Deep down we know our emptiness and there are times we are keenly aware of our hunger pangs, though we quickly find a painfully temporary and artificial remedy.
Only Jesus can deliver us from ourselves...our sin...our restlessness. I know this because I remember what it felt like to hunger for purpose and identity. I know the selfish ambition and vain pursuits all too well. But Christ radically transformed my life and through my relationship with Him I found what I had so desperately been searching for. In the words of St. Augustine, “You have created us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”
I gave my dear friend the help she was asking for today. I gave it to her knowing that there was a greater need behind those hurting eyes. I held her hand and told her that I loved her and prayed that the Lord would open her eyes to her need for Him. I pray for her as I pray for the millions of people in this part of the world who have never heard the name of Jesus. I pray for her as I pray for those that I love back home who have heard His name but continue to seek the things that will never satisfy. I pray for myself and those who have already been rescued by His grace that we would stop seeking the things of this world and our own selves. I pray that our short lives here on this earth would be spent relentlessly sharing our hope, JESUS, with others.
