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A (Brief) Moment of Clarity

Posted Sep 16, 12:07 AM | 1 comments | by Editor | Link

As glimpsed from inside the village church in Seje, Kenya

By Mike Todd:

God has designed a perfect system, even given the fallen nature of the world. In some ways it is a “closed” system — He has built in the solutions for the problems of the world.

This morning, somewhere in Africa, an elderly grandmother prays to God. She needs help. With the death of her last daughter she now has six remaining grandchildren to care for. And while the other two children are not blood relations she treats them as her own. She has no money, and the small patch of land she tends does not yield much, even when the rains do come. She makes sure that the children almost always eat something every day, which means that she will often go a day or more without food. And should one of the children get sick, there is simply no care for them. That is how she lost her youngest granddaughter last year; a simple bug went unchecked.

And so she prays.

She prays for food for the children. She prays for their health, and for her own. After all, who will care for the children when she dies? Mostly she prays that God will be merciful to her, and that He will somehow rescue her from these dire circumstances. “God, please help me!” she cries from her bed.

On the other side of the planet I wake up. I pray for the grandmother, and those like her, whose circumstances I do not know. I pray that justice and mercy will roll down like a river. I pray, “God, please help them!”

And then I get in my car and drive to the mall to pick up a few things.

I may be part of the body of Christ, but I am like a dead limb, taking up space but not contributing to the well-being and purpose of the body.

This system is perfect, but only if I see myself as part of it. Christ’s hands and feet. I am not Christ, but I am his appendages. And today, Christ’s hands and feet are strolling through the kitchen section of IKEA, looking for something Swedish for complacency.

Photo by Mike Todd

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Mike Todd and his wife Sue live in community in Delta, British Columbia, where they’re trying to figure out what it means to be an apprentice of Jesus.

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