Same ole' same ole'

The past month or so has been much of the same, school, practice, kid’s club, onion boys and learning to love people like Christ loves me.  In each of these areas God is teaching me to see people like He sees them.  This upcoming week will bring some new challenges!  But I will share about those later.  First I want to share with you a few quotes from the book I have been reading by Philip Yancey called Soul Survivor.  In the book Yancey gives a history of 13 people and explains why they helped him “survive the church.”  So if you don't want to read a bunch of quotes from the book and other places, you can skip to the end, but the quotes will make you think!

                Yancey’s chapter on Dr. Paul Brand was very interesting to me.  Brand worked with leprosy patients and was the first to discover and prove that leprosy attacks the nerve cells.  Here are a few different quotes from this chapter: “Do you know about the ductus arteriosus?  A bypass vessel, it routes blood directly to a developing fetus’s extremities, instead of to the lungs.   At the moment of birth, suddenly all blood must pass through the lungs to receive oxygen because now the baby is breathing air.  In a flash, a flap descends like a curtain, deflecting the blood flow, and a muscle constricts the ductus arteriosus.  After performing that one act, the muscle gradually dissolves and gets absorbed by the rest of the body.  Without this split-second adjustment, the baby could never survive outside the womb.”

“Most people view pain as an enemy.  Yet, as my leprosy patients prove, it forces us to pay attention to threats against our bodies.  Without it, heart attacks, strokes, ruptured appendixes, and stomach ulcers would all occur without any warning.  Who would ever visit a doctor apart from pain’s warnings?  I noticed that the symptoms of illness my patients complained about were actually a display of bodily healing at work.  Virtually every response of our bodies that we view with irritation or disgust –blister, callus, swelling, fever, sneeze, cough, vomiting, and especially pain – demonstrates a reflex toward health.  In all these things normally considered enemies, we can find a reason to be grateful.”  “To the problem of pain itself….God gave no direct answer, only this challenge to Job: If I, as Creator, have produced such a marvelous world as this, which you can plainly observe, can you not trust me with those areas you cannot understand?”

Quote from Dr. Robert Coles in Soul Survivor: “There is a worldview which says that anxiety, pain, and fear are part of what life is meant to be, that God himself assumed such a life, that he lived under continual anxiety, pain, and fear, and ended up as a common criminal strung up on a cross and killed.  Now, if you take that kind of existence as a very important one and as a model of sorts, then you’re going to have a difficult time becoming as ‘successful’ as you may have been told you ought to be if you come from a middle-class family.  You have a moral dilemma.”

From the chapter on Tolstoy: “His (Tolstoy) futile striving helped convince me that my failures fully to realize the truth do not devalue the truth itself but instead point out my continuing need to cast myself on God’s mercy. An idea cannot be held responsible for those who profess to believe it.  With Tolstoy, I learned to say to critics, ‘…..attack me rather than the path I follow.’”

“In a world ruled by law, grace stands as a sign of contradiction.  We want fairness; the gospel gives us an innocent man nailed to a cross who cries out, ‘Father, forgive them.’  We want respectability; the gospel elevates tag collectors, prodigals, and Samaritans.  We want success; the gospel reverses the terms, moving the poor and downtrodden to the head of the line and the wealthy and famous to the rear.”

From the chapter on John Donne: “We often do not understand God’s methods or the reasons behind them.  The most important question though, is whether God is a trustworthy ‘physician.’”

From the chapter on Henri Nouwen: “Through Nouwen’s eyes, I saw a new way to look at such people: not as immoral and ungodly, but as thirsty – as people dying for love.  Like the Samaritan woman at the well, they had drunk their fill of water that did not satisfy…..Whenever I encountered someone whose behavior offended or revolted me, I would pray, ‘God, help me to see this person not as repulsive, but as thirsty.’”

“Nouwen was the first person I knew to use the phrase downward mobility.  In a 1981 article in Sojourners he wrote against the uncontrolled drive for prestige, power, and ambition – in other words, the upward mobility – characteristic of American culture.  ‘The great paradox which Scripture reveals to us is that real and total freedom can only be found through downward mobility.  The Word of God came down to us and lived among us as a slave.  The divine way is indeed the downward way.”

This quote isn’t from the book, but I think it relates to the others well: “You have never locked eyes with another human being who isn’t valuable to God.  When this fact grips you to the core of your being you’ll never be the same.  You will live in awe of the scope and depth and breadth of God’s love, and you’ll treat people differently.” –Bill Hybels and Mark Mettelber

                As you may have noticed, the majority of these quotes deal with understanding how much God really loves us and how contradictory that love is to our 21^st century culture.  I am learning more and more from God’s Word (and from other Christians) how different my life should be compared to the non-Christians I meet and know.  They should wonder why I love them and the people I meet without wanting anything in return!  Isn’t that exactly what Christ did for us!!  He loved us when we were in complete rebellion to Him and covered in sin!!  It all comes back to the fact that Jesus loves you and me and desires for us to love him because he first loved us.  Notice a theme here?  LOVE!  How do you love?  Read the Gospels and look at how Jesus loved, then go out and live it!  Also look at I Corinthians 13!

                Let me also add the fact that I am not even close to realizing and living out the love that God has given to me.  God is slowly teaching me to see other through his eyes and I am excited about where He is leading me and will lead me in the future!

                From the 6^th to the 15^th of April I will have the opportunity to travel to City of Refuge in the Volta Region to serve them and their ministries.  (This is the same place we went to the day after Thanksgiving)  Throughout the week I will be teaching some PE classes and training the teachers to have more structured outdoor time for the students.  Other than that I have no idea what I will be doing!  I’m sure there will be plenty of time spent playing and interacting with the 20 or so kids and orphans staying there!  I will update my blog again when I get back and tell you all how everything went!

                I want to say thank you to those of you who continue to pray for me and the people I get to interact with during my time here in Ghana!  Some updates on prayer requests before I show some pictures: 1. Pray for the students in the small groups we have on Friday during lunch!  Pray that they would develop a hunger for God’s Word and a desire to love God and others.  2.  Continue to pray for the Onion boys.  The past couple weeks I have noticed several of them doing their prayers for Islam.  Pray that the couple of boys who have accepted Christ would find a way to share, and that their witness and ours would not come back void! 3. Pray for City of Refuge and the many ministries they run in the Volta Region of Ghana. (Here is their website and a video about the child slaves they rescue: http://www.cityofrefugeoutreach.com/ http://vimeo.com/23274012 

The Limbo at the Fun Fair we had for neighborhood kids

Rafik's painted face after a Sunday afternoon full of soccer

Eddie painting my face!

The results! haha

Me and Kobby (deaf boy from the neighborhood) writing his name with chalk

Our baseball team!

Christy with one of the onion boys

The Onion boys' tree hang out by the side of the road

The other Onion boys' tree hang out and me helping Moro read  One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish  haha