Beginning late once again on a Sunday night and I am dead tired. The reason is because it has been a very full day beginning with me preaching at our church, PTI. I was asked to give a sermon on reading the Bible as a spiritual discipline, as we are doing an ongoing study on being imitators of Christ. We have looked at several spiritual disciplines in the past (prayer, fasting) so Bible reading was next.
I do read the Bible on a daily basis (the Bible in a year) and have been doing this for the past 5 years so I did have something to say, however it would probably not be the sermon topic I would choose had I been given a choice.
One thing I did in preparation was to check on the litteracy rate of Burundi. I found that it was under 60 percent. I also know that many children who are learning to read in school have bad eyes and cannot afford glasses. Most people also do not have electricity so would only be able to read in daylight hours when other work needed to be done. So I began the sermon by saying that in this cultural context Bible reading is first and foremost a privilege! And that probably less then 50 percent of the population would be able to do so even if they wanted to.
I also raised the question about whether, given the importance we put on reading the Bible for spiritually maturity, the church needs to see as one of its mission here teaching litteracy. I know historically the church saw itself as having this role for precisely this reason.
I ended the sermon with a warning about using the Bible to support a half-truth, which is, in my opinion worse than a lie. I gave the example, in Burundi of the Hamitic doctrine promoted by many colonial Christians here that claimed that Tutsis were descendants of Noah's son Ham while Hutus were lesser indigenous people. Consequently education was given to Tutsis and not Hutus. This reenforced ethnic division that led to civil war in the 1990s. I said that using the Bible to support an errant human doctrine was dangerous and easy to do if one takes scripture out of context of the whole biblical canon.
All in all it went OK, although I was more long-winded than I would have liked to be.
This has been a fairly normal week in some respects. We have enjoyed being back from Nigeria and have gone back to our normal routines. Swimming has been the most enjoyable one to return to. One thing that is different is that Oren is out of school the next 2 weeks for spring break. So he has been at home all day. He actually seems to miss going to school and asks most mornings "Is today a school day?"
This has meant we are a bit more limited with how much work we can do. I have been going to the office in the mornings and Rebecca in the afternoon.
The other challenge they face is trying to get registered officially with the government as an NGO. It is incredibly difficult to do if you do not want to pay any bribes. They are committed to doing it completely honestly without bribes and the process is moving at a snails pace. I do respect their committement to do this honestly although I can tell that the process can be disheartening at times.
The morning after we went for dinner Rebecca woke up with vomiting and diarrhea. We suspected food poisoning but me and the kids were fine and so were Astrud and Travis' family. (We had shared all the food.) So we ruled that out. She was quite sick all day and started an antibiotic that afternoon. By the next day she was feeling better, but Oren started to get sick, first with diarrhea, then a very high fever. We puzzled over the symptoms then tried an antibiotic on him. He als responded well very quicly and has been well the past 3 days.
We were blessed to have a visitor drop by this week. It was Simon Guillebaud whom I have talked about in past blogs. He has been with his family in the UK promoting his book and DVD, but did come by to visit some of the projects his group Great Lakes Outreach is involved in.
It was good to see him and to hear that things are going well with them. They are still awaiting a resident visa for the US where he hopes to do some book and DVD promotion as well. I have mentioned this in the past but I would like to encourage people who read this to consider getting this video for a Sunday school or small group or even better Youth group Bible study series. It is really good, and very challenging to Christians to be 'dangerous' in our committment to follow Jesus' and embrace his priorities. The link to the dvd is here: http://www.more-than-conquerors.com
Money raised for this all goes to supporting the work of Great Lakes Outreach in Burundi which benefits several of our local partners as well.
We did take some time as a family this Saturday to go swimming at Entente Sportif. Oren is gettng quite good at swimming now even in deep water. David also loves to run around in the kids pool, although we have to watch him like a hawk as he falls over frequenlty. He does have an instinct to hold his breath when he hits the water which Oren never had, so David does not come out coughing when we pull him up. I will be happy when he knows how to get up himself though.
This one was particularly poignant because having returned from our regional meetings where discussion of crisis contingency was a hot topic in Nigeria, we felt we needed to talk about this more in depth with our team. Especially in this election year.
We have been developing a crisis contingency plan (what to do in an emergency) to share with our team. But what came out of the Nigeria meetings was a discussion about preparing our team spiritually for dealing with crisis. The Nigeria reps told us that what was hard was realizing that members of their team do not come with any uniform 'theology of risk'. And some, on taking the assignment, had not even considered very seriously what their faith in God led them to believe about their own security. Does one for instance believe that God will inded protect them from any harm, or that God would be with them in a time of danger or suffering and help them through it? Or even, that God will in fact send as a test, circumstances of danger and suffering. Some people may not even come with much faith at all that God is 'active' in any of this, and they need to 'take care of themselves'.
All tht to say, people come with different spiritual resources to be prepared for risk in an assignment. Thus some might want to run at the first indication of problems, while ohers might feel called to stay with their work in the midst of a full scale war, for instance.
MCC has been historically known for its willingness to stay with and accompany others in times of danger, rather than being the first group to leave. But there has been some concern that this had been excessive in the past.
So yesterday we did a Bible study as a team and read different passages about how Jesus and the Apostles dealt with risk in the Gospels and the book of Acts. What we found is that the response was quite varied. Jesus, for instance did not let himself be killed everytime a crowd had a mind do to so. He did 'slip through them in Nazereth, and in John 8 he hides himself in the temple after a dangerous provocation. Yet clearly he knew at the time when it was required, he would sacrifice himself.
The same is true of the Apostles, sometimes, they ran away, or took council not to enter a place, or appealed for help from local authorities. While other times they did accept stoning, imprisonment and death.
All that to say, that a theology of risk does not mean a wreckless willingness to put oneself in situations of danger, but rather some serious discernment about what is required in a particular circumstance.
We also had a chance for each of us to share our personal thresholds of risk. What did we fear most? Not surprisginly those of us who are parents had much lower thresholds of risk than the singles on our team. Children add an entirely new dynamic as far as what we are willing to risk.
For me I realize that coming out here was an act of faith. I believe that coming here was following a prompting from God. But I do realize that I have been in situations here that made me afraid. I realize that I do not have a faith that God will protect us from anything bad happening, but I do believe our lives are in God's hands. I am also beginning to realize, as I develop a personal theology of risk, that I have to trust that he will give us wisdom to know what the right response is to a crisis. There is no Biblical requirement to get ourselves killed.
More later, the kids are getting out of bed and climbing on the computer so I will post and edit later if necessary.
Appendix: If you want to know what we discussed in our Theology or Risk conversation today. Here is a series of questions we asked ourselves and then assesed the answers together. You might find the questions interesting yourself.
1. What do I strongly believe about God, His character, His relevance and care?
2. What do I strongly believe about God and prayer, His power and ability, His willingness
to intervene on my behalf, His promises to deliver, provide and protect?
3. What do I strongly believe about living in a fallen world as a believer engaged in
ministry, a ministry that challenges the kingdom and powers of darkness?
4. What do I strongly believe about the importance and value of being part of a community,
with close relationships? How do I account for the frailty and weakness of people, as well
as my own?
5. What do I believe about myself, my vulnerability or invulnerability to pain and suffering,
my readiness to endure, my resilience, my commitment for the long haul? What is it I
believe about the value of hardship and pain and suffering in my life?
No comments:
Post a Comment