Perspective: Get a New One

One of the benefits of orphan care is the new perspective it gives you on so many things.  The tentacles of caring for the orphaned reach into many arenas—oppression, poverty, social justice, greed, and just all around selfishness.  It taps into the brokenness of this world at its core: relationships.   As God has changed the physical make-up of my family, He has changed my heart as well.  He is tearing down the barriers between us and them.  He is opening up our eyes to the truth.  “Those” people are beloved by God.  So am I.  Which means “those” people are mine and I am theirs.  There is, in fact, no them.                

                      

Despite having lost our referral of J, a boy with Cerebral Palsy, my heart changed.  I am appalled at the flippant way I used jokingly use the R word or crack jokes about men being like handicapped parking spots.  Sure, I wasn’t mean to people out right, but in the dark, I felt better than THEM.  But when I loved a THEM, THEM became MINE.  So I suspect that when Jesus told us to love and serve the least of them, he wasn’t just issuing a mandate of missional living, but showing us our hearts.  We are them.  

We live in a disposable culture.  We have disposable silverware, plates, clothes, food.  I’m not sure if half of my kids will get more than one meal today.  So I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste the food in my refrigerator.  It’s offensive, really.  Those starving kids in Africa that your mom told you to clear your plate for?  Those are my kids.  Meanwhile, I throw out a half eaten banana left in the playroom or an unopened bag of salad that has liquefied in my crisper drawer. 

 The other night I saw an ad for something called the Wraptastic.  For just shy of $11, you can buy a plastic box to help you cut your foil and saran wrap.  You know, just in case you don’t like the way the box that they come in does it for you.  People, get some perspective.  Donate that $11 to a clean water initiative.  Use it to buy food to put in your local food bank.  Because to pay money to neatly wrap your leftovers that you’ll most likely toss in two days is just freaking ridiculous.  I mean, there are kids who die from diseases because they have no shoes and you pay money to decorate your saran wrap that is stored in a drawer?  Puh-lease.  

I don’t mean to sound all bitter and angry.  

 I’m just as bad.  We get segregated.  We hang out with people who look and act and work and shop and vote and educate only like us.  We have no perspective of the them.   We don’t love them because we don’t even know them.  But Jesus was intentional.  He walked different routes than the usual just to connect and intersect and relate to and love them.  (And this isn’t even counting the whole, you know, leaving heaven to come to earth trek.)

It took maybe three weeks of living in our new neighborhood until I said to Sloan, “How did we ever survive in a house with such a small yard?”  And if you’d heard my tone of voice you would’ve understood was that I was really saying “We used to live in a dump, can you even imagine?”  Three weeks in an older golf course neighborhood and I equated our former subdivision with a hovel.  So while I don’t live in poverty, my heart is distended from the way I’ve fed only my selfishness and not my self-denial.  Father, forgive me.

This is why we serve.  This is why segregation of race, class, political leaning, ethnicity, educational level is so harmful.  We navel gaze and get stuck on only our vantage point.   We get stuck in some #firstworldproblem loop.  We lose our grasp on the difference between wants and needs.  In the past week I’ve convinced myself I need the following—a new Ipad mini {because my first gen Ipad is sooooo big and soooo slow}, a remote control for my bedroom light {because I have to actually get out of bed at night and walk three feet to turn it off, I mean I might as well live in a prison!},  a fancy cheese cutting board {because I have to use an actual knife and cutting board like some sort of backwoods hobo}, and of course, I’m always convinced I need a new minivan because the Suburban is eleven years old, a gas guzzler, and (gasp!) you have to actually open the doors with your hands!  Father, forgive me.

Here is what I actually need:  Jesus.  

That is all.  

I don’t need Him to give me better eyesight but to actually give me new eyes.  I don’t need him just to adjust the way I love, but to completely replace my old shriveled heart with his resurrected one.  I don’t need him to just tend and prune my wants, but to outright burn and til under my old wants and then plant new ones.  C.S Lewis describes this complete overhaul of self and perspective this way: 

“Christ says . . . I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it.  No half measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down . . .the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as

the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: My own will shall become yours.”

So you see, there is no us and them.  There is only Us and Him.