Swallowed Up By Life

“We groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”

Every Thursday is a fellowship meeting where 25 to 40 Maasai come to worship.  Most Thursdays things are very average and normal.  They sing some Maasai songs (which the girls are getting very good at) someone shares a word from the Bible mostly centered around being good and doing what’s right, being pleasing to God by not doing what is wrong, then they pray for people that have needs (mostly sicknesses).  After a few months of this fellowship, sometimes it can be a little boring.  There! I said it!  Church in Africa is often really, really boring!  I remember talking with my wife’s great, great aunt from Scotland about church in America one day and she was being so critical of worship these days.  She called it “7Eleven” worship songs because you sing the same seven words eleven times.  I thought, “where is her passion?  Does she know nothing of meditation and waiting on the Lord?”  Well, today, Jesus is kicking my butt and reminding me about that conversation and my feelings for her every time we enter into a worship service because it is like “5twentyeight” worship here and I get so bored!  So I was watching last Thursday as the minutes on the clock were passing by slowly, seeing a handful of old ladies, a dozen young mothers, and one or two sidelined men or boys singing worship songs asking the God of Moses to take the hill (what meaning that has for a Maasai I have no idea) and I felt like my eyes opened.  I started thinking of the anthropology classes I’d taken in college.  I started thinking about every conversation I’ve had with every anti-evangelism philanthropist or American co- worker that accuses religious institutions of just bringing newly packaged religion to a different culture and in the process destroying the beauty of diversity and I started asking myself what real change was happening here?  Really, poor Maasai come to a well supported western style mission base to sing songs and they get stuff in return.  That sounds exactly like what critics describe us to be.  All of a sudden I became very frustrated and discouraged when all of a sudden the songs ended and the worship director lead us to change course a bit. 

He led us all to share some of the struggles anyone was passing through and then, to just lay them down and enter into the presence of the Lord.  This time, when I looked around the room, my eyes opened in a different way than before.  I saw a 60 year old 6 foot tall woman with a huge gap between her teeth and barely any meat on her bones close her eyes begin to experience something that until that moment I had been missing that day.  What I saw in her face was something that can’t really be argued by Evangelical culture killers and Anthropological Jesus haters because it has nothing to do with any of them.  No matter how many conversations I have about the proper approaches to missions or the abuses of churches to manipulate people, this woman was in the middle of an experience that no one else can really convince her of one way or another.  The peace that surpasses understanding, the grace that is sufficient for her, the love that is everlasting, the mercies that are new every morning really have nothing to do with me or anybody else.  Koko Elizabeth spends time with Jesus and that isn’t predicated on my ability to enjoy a worship service or not and it isn’t contingent on whether anthropological data shows our work is viable or not.  Then I looked around the room and saw more people experiencing something that can’t be quantified or measured, but can only be taken by faith.  I saw a young mother of 3 younger than my youngest sister with swelling above her right eye probably from an angry young man with her eyes closed and her mouth parted speaking to someone that I could not see.  I saw an old man all alone, without other young warriors to respect and honor him, but yet he comes and watches as people speak words of adoration to a God that will never leave nor forsake no matter who we are or what we have done.  I saw a little girl that would one day most likely be sold by her father  to a man, young or old, purchased for a price and then used the rest of her life…but before any of that happens she gets to hear about a man, A MAN! who traveled across the universe to tell her that he loves her more than anything in the universe and would lay down his life for her.  Then, this word of 2 Corithians comes to life.  For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, SO THAT WHAT IS MORTAL MAY BE SWALLOWED UP BY LIFE!

That is definitely worth an hour or two of my time.  I don’t know if anyone else gets bored at church sometimes, but next time you do, I give you this challenge.  Open your eyes and look around.  Look to see if what you are feeling is the same thing everyone else is experiencing.  Maybe you will find that God is doing some things that you didn’t see before and I assure you, when God moves nothing is boring.