A WORLD OF CONTRASTS

Lamentations 1:1-2:22; Philemon 1-25; Psalm 101:1-8; Proverbs 26:20

“My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within, my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city. They cry, ‘Mama, we want food’ as they collapse in their mothers’ arms. Their lives ebb away like the life of a warrior wounded in battle. In all the world, has there ever been such sorrow?”

“I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.”

“My heart is confident in you, O God; no wonder I can sing your praises with all my heart! Wake up, lyre and harp! I will wake the dawn with my song. I will thank you, Lord, among all the people. I will sing your praises among the nations.”

“Fire goes out without fuel….”

Lamentations is not hard to understand, but it is tough to read. In fact, our difficulty in reading it stems mainly from the fact that we understand it too well. The horror of its descriptions grips our imaginations until our minds recoil in silent refusal to accept the obvious analogies to our own time. No one wants to think of starving children and desolate civilizations. Sorrow, like depression, has a contagion all its own. To some extent, we actually do well to focus on something else for a time.

For what may even be a majority of people in the world, though, there really is nothing else. Many brother and sister humans know only too well what it feels like to put their children to bed hungry and listen to them wail for food to fill their empty bellies until exhaustion takes them. They live in unsanitary squalor, eating in conditions we would not countenance at a landfill. Disease is rampant; shelter is all but non-existent; and the modern amenities of plumbing, electricity and the like might as well be dreams. There are no doctors, no medicines, no health care of any kind to speak of. Truly, these folks are on their own, and they know well the price of independence can be far higher than most of us think. Economic isolation can turn to social isolation in a heartbeat. It is only a short step from there to physical alienation. Too often, we just turn a blind eye to their predicaments. They make us uncomfortable, and some of them can be downright draining to be around. But it is no good just looking away. We need to make our peace with how Jesus calls us to deal with those less fortunate.

First, we can learn. Some of the severely underprivileged actually can teach us a thing or two about gratitude and determination. There are those committed few who just refuse to be overcome by their circumstances, no matter how bad the situation. They love and sacrifice for their children to the point of denying themselves. They are not afraid to be footstools for their kids, if it means giving them the proverbial “leg up.” They also truly understand and give thanks for the miracle of supernatural blessing when they see it. After all, when one is dying of thirst, even a single glass of water takes on a whole new meaning.

Second, we need to recognize that in poverty, as in blessing, there are two kinds of people. There are those whose needs we can help, and those who turn help into greater need. There are those who suck the very life out of everything with their wants and profound sense of injustice, and there are those, like Philemon, who breathe life back into every situation. It seems to me this is more than just personal style. Some people are naturally wired to be life-injectors, while others gravitate toward being life suckers. We need to recognize and build up the first, and provide for and convert the others. These aren’t my rules. They’re what Jesus did.

Life injectors are the antidote to life suckers. They carry with them an infectious joy that transcends circumstances. They look outside themselves to the potential beyond. They share what they have. And they don’t spend a lot of time “fixin’ to.” Where they see needs, they move to meet them. Where they see problems, they act to address them. We are called to go and do likewise.

It’s no good moping about what any of us don’t have. Rich or poor, blessed or cursed, we all get greedy and too self aware at times. It seems to me that the life-injectors have got the right approach. If we could all learn to be a little more like them, we probably could start a cultural revolution the likes of which the world has never seen. Paul’s vision of widows and orphans being cared for by the church would no longer sound so arcane, because the life-injectors would be doing it. And they would be powered by the Holy Spirit.

When it comes to the big ticket items like poverty and oppression, there is much for God’s people to do. Many wring their hands in anguish, afraid any attempt to act will just prove futile and drain them. They forget that any time we fail to act because we want more to maintain our own place and power, we are living in fear of the insufficiency of the Father. When we act in joyous disregard of the effect our self-sacrifice may have, we lay claim to the sufficiency of the Father. Life suckers drain; life injectors infect everyone around them with joy and a sense of belonging. I know which one I’d like to be, the man Christ calls me to be. I’d like to be the guy who gives to others without regard for what he can get in return. I want to be Philemon, looking for opportunities to serve, rather than the writer of Lamentations, bound up by the apparent futility in what he sees. All it takes is an honest evaluation of what I really think about God. Will He provide, or won’t He? Put that way, the question brings most of life into much sharper focus.