Stories from the Slum
Following a children's program at a church in a poor neighborhood, I stepped outside and saw an elderly woman sitting outside her home. Upon seeing me, she began waving her hand excitedly to call me over. Once I arrived at her side she held my hand and started speaking many sentences in Thai as if I understood. When she revealed a long scar on the outside of her thigh, I remembered. Last summer we met this woman at a different house, and at that time she hadn't been able to walk for a year and a half, so we prayed for her.
One year later, she remains lame. So again, I prayed that God would give her strength to walk in the name of Jesus. Nothing happened. Instead of God showing Himself to be the Most High, she will continue in the cultural religion she has followed her whole life.
"O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and You will not hear? Or cry to You 'Violence!' and You will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong?" -Habakkuk 1:2-3
Where was God when upright Job suffered great loss? When God's so-called chosen people remained enslaved for 400 years in Egypt? Or when David, anointed by God to be king, spent months running for his life? Or when Christ, the Holy One of God, was brutally whipped and nailed to a cross...
In reading these accounts, we have the advantage of knowing the outcome. When personally experiencing those circumstances, however, the questions tear at us with greater intensity.
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." -Isaiah 55:9
Will I humbly trust and continue to seek Him, even when He doesn't show up the way I want Him to or would expect? Or even more challenging, when I see injustice and evil in the world do I take responsibility for making God real in places far from His love and hope? Is that not what we are called to?
Children come to the program at church because it's safe as well as a place where they experience love. In the slum, God is becoming real because followers of Christ give of themselves to spread light in a dark place, enduring harassment from some villagers to make Christ known. Perhaps God wants us to experience how He feels and that by sharing in His compassion we have the privilege of knowing Him more intimately. Perhaps He wonders why we don't take Jesus seriously when He says in John 20:21, "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." Why are we living here on this earth if not to advance the glorious kingdom of God by bringing goods news to the poor, binding the brokenhearted, and proclaiming liberty to the captives (Isaiah 61:1)?
"O Lord, You hear the desire of the afflicted; You will strengthen their heart; You will incline Your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more." -Psalm 10:17-18
We forget God often chooses to use us to do His justice and mercy.
