an uncomfortable voice

Challenged: that’s the word that pounds in my chest and shouts in my head. I mean really challenged.

Sometimes it seems like too often we use this word and it never gets us anywhere. We can say that we are “challenged” but we are never really moved, we can be “challenged” but never really shaken, at least not to the point of response. Yet how can we be challenged in and by faith without responding?

Faith cannot have a non-response.

Either we accept the challenge, the invitation to be used by God, or we push it aside. Ultimately, its a choice between what's comfortable and what's uncomfortable.

This morning I received an email that shared the newest post from one of the blogs that I follow. Often times I dismiss them because the posts are so long to read. Yet this morning, unintentionally, I happened to click on the email, and when it opened I was immediately immersed; completely captured by the words . . . this is what she wrote. . . 
 

I am not going to lie.
When your kin comes knocking on your own back door — come to ask how that trip to Haiti went — how can you look them in the eye and lie?
How can you lie still when babies are drowning in a sea of poverty?
How can you not scream?
I tell Mama that I think I’m angry.
Mama sits down.
And I pace, this hunting for words for the indescribable. And it comes out haltingly, that I think if I open my mouth, it will come right out, this roar. This inhumane, howling moan that only the Spirit can make any sense of…
Angry? She says.
And there’s no holding this tattered roar back.

I’m angry at sin that smothers children and selfishness that steals human dignity and apathy that infects the hearts of the comfortable. And I pound my own chest.
I’m angry at me.
Angry at how much I want comfortable more than I want Christ.
Angry at how much I want to forget that grimy boy leaned over a garbage heap, wiping his fingers along the inside of food tray, looking for anything left. I’m wildly angry that I want to forget the struggle of the poor so I can pin the next pretty idea on Pinterest.
I’m angry that I’ve seen and I’m ashamed that I am angry and I’m angry that I’ve seen and now I am responsible. More than response-able – we’re response-bound. Once we have seen the poor, we are responsible — we will make a response. As long as your heart is beating, there’s no such thing as unresponsive. We all look into the face of the poor and it’s either Yes, I will help. Or no, I won’t.
There’s no getting off the hook.
Faith cannot have a non-response.
We’re either responding with indifference or with intercession, either with apathy or aid.
You can’t look into the face of the poor and just plead the fifth amendment. Your life is always your answer.
I feel sick that I feel so angry.
Sick that I want to Pin with abandon, that I don’t want to be a witness, that I want someone else be an uncomfortable voice for the poor. Sick that six weeks from now I can grow cold and forget. I have.

Why do Christians make their lives tell all these half-truths?

How long can you walk around feeling like you have whiplash? Is heart whiplash what you need to wake your heart up?

Why would we rather turn a blind eye to the needy than turn to the needy and be like Christ? Do we like our own wants and comfort more than we want to be like Christ?

-   -   -

 

If the grace of my life is mostly where I am born, and I am born again into the family of Christ, than how can my life birth anything other than a grace that gives?
It’s what I found right here in Haiti: it’s all in the end a gift and a gift never stops being a gift, it’s always meant to be given, and it’s all by His grace alone and I bend my stiff neck and I’m wrecked and everything gives way.
Why do good things happen to people who happen to take all that good for granted?

I am so angry and so much at me.
When you are born again into the Kingdom of God, how can you ever again forget your kin? Part of the solution to poverty is doing whatever it takes to get your heart to stay with the poor.
There may be miles between the rich and the poor, but how can there be distance in the family of God. 
 

Challenged.

Challenged to respond.

Challenged to live in the uncomfortable.

Challenged to want Christ more than I want comfortable.

 

“To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps.” 1 Peter 2:21