The Bigger Picture

Came back from Edmonton at 6 a.m. yesterday. Didn’t sleep much on the plane, but managed to get two hours of shut-eye before having to tutor. I was surprised—the brief nap was enough to charge me for the rest of the day.

You know when you go someplace, meet a few people you never expected to meet, hear stories you never thought you’d have the pleasure of hearing—and in a subtle way, you come back home a little more introspective, as if something’s changed inside of you. You don’t know what it is, but you sense it’s for the better, and you hope to God that the feeling doesn’t go away, or that when it does, you’d remember the feeling.

With seminary studies just around the corner, I can feel the onset of change. I’m wondering, I’m curious, I’m anxious, I’m scared—I’m excited. It’s that glorious state that I never enter into unless my imagination is impressed by the presence of God. That His Hand is in everything. And the beauty that He presents before me, in people and in circumstances, often leaves my soul in tears of thankfulness.

None of this I deserve, yet You have freely given.

At the tradeshow, it was this: the reminder that I am a Christian, and with every Christian stranger I meet, we are connected. Our faith in and love for God connects us. I don’t know you, but you and I, we are seeking the same God, loving the same God. To not know someone, and yet, upon hearing his or her stories, you know what they are all about, and where his or her heart is—this is something so empowering, so uplifting, so divine.

That the mere act of hearing another brother or sister tell his or her story and then be prompted to act accordingly in my own spiritual life—love more, sacrifice more, know Him more—this is Contagious Christianity. God never stops working in my life, regardless of the hundreds of times I’ve ventured off course.

The man I spoke to during the banquet dinner in Edmonton, who spoke of his experiences as a missionary in Africa. “You ask them how many children they have, they don’t know because they have no concept of numbers; there is no ‘stealing’ because there is no concept of ownership… they are the poorest of the poor… and yet there is joy…” and then through all the challenges he has had to face, he said, “I would go back in a heartbeat.”

The testimony of writers who have shared about their journeys through pain and redemption in their books. A husband dying of a heart attack in the middle of a barren camp site, the wife left all alone. A mother who loses her newborn baby, after twenty-nine days. A woman suffering the loss of two husbands and freak accidents that left her two children in comas—the months spent by their side when the doctor told her there was no hope. And in all of it, their faith in God prevailed.

Yes, we are all connected. Our faith grows stronger by hearing each other’s stories and then sharing our own. And for the timid, like me, we witness this courage, and thereupon the Holy Spirit gives us that nudge we need to go forward. In 2 Timothy 1:7, it says: "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. "

So many people out there, the girl or boy next to us, the child in another country, the sick, the widow, who need us to defend them. As it is written in Psalm 68:5: "A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, God in his holy dwelling."

I heard this in the sermon preached last week, which was entitled, "A Biblical Response to HIV/AIDS": If our hearts can be broken in witnessing the suffering in the world, how much more is God’s heart breaking. I have, at one time or another, said this statement in my prayers, although it is a frightening one to utter if I truly believe God will answer it: “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.” Pray for the sensitivity.

When God answers this prayer, I have to be prepared. Because with the things that make me happy in my life, the things that I enjoy—from home décor to basking in the complacency of my home in Toronto to seeing my family who are just a phone call away—all of these are hard to let go should one day God ask me to. How much am I willing to sacrifice? Everything around us tells us to hold on tight—fend for ourselves—it’s a tough world out there. And so we live, as the preacher had said last Sunday, in this “piety,” this self-obsessed, self-absorbed Christianity: "Until we help, we have a dysfunctional Christian faith. We live with God in the playpen."

Why am I anxious and scared? Because I am reminded by these strangers with whom I cross paths that Christianity cannot be about staying where you are. For the bold, and for the timid, we must journey into that other place: ‘the safest place to be is where God wants you to be.’

It’s one Kingdom, and it is our Father’s. How tempting it is to be sitting back, relaxing in our own.