Moving to the Depths

Every time I tell someone here in Mexico that I want to live in Honduras, they all react the same--with a disgusted face and with the all-too-familiar question of ¨Why would you ever want to live there?¨ I have one professor who likes to pick on me about my attachment to Honduras, and he told me that they have a saying here that uses the word ¨Honduras¨ that translates to ¨Don´t put me in Honduras¨--that is, ¨Don´t get me into trouble.¨ The word ¨hondura¨ in Spanish literally translates into ¨depth¨; thus, Honduras equals depths. I want to move to the depths. I can´t help but laugh and feel that this is wildly appropriate for me.

Recently, I have been reminded of what true worship is and what our attitude toward God and others should be. It echoes in the life of Mother Theresa, of which I´m still reading, and it echoes in the words of Isaiah, the book in which I´ve been stuck. During a conversation with God in 1947, according to Come Be My Light, Mother Theresa felt as if God was telling her the following:
My little one--come--come--carry Me into the holes of the poor.--Come be My light.--I cannot go alone--they don´t know Me--so they don´t want Me. You come--go amongst them, carry Me with you into them.--How I long to enter their holes--their dark unhappy homes.

I know there there is a tendency to want to think of Mother Theresa as ultra-spiritual, as abnormal, demonstrating some magical, transcendental power to want to live that way. We, especially in the western world, tend to think of Mother Theresa or other missionaries and think, ¨Good for them. I could never do that.¨ I know this to be true because that was my perspective before I met Alvin Anderson and his family. I assumed that being a missionary was some supernatural calling that only the most dedicated, pious people could accomplish. But that´s simply not the case. God gave all of us the role of missionary--perhaps it is not to be a foreign missionary, but the Great Commission was given to all of Jesus´followers. It´s not just stated in the red letters; it is echoed all throughout the Bible, especially in Isaiah 61:
The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, announce freedom to all captives, pardon all prisoners. God sent me to announce the year of his grace--a celebration of God´s destruction of our enemies--and to comfort all who mourn.

In the western world, we tend to think that people need to come to us. We hold big events and think of marketing campaigns and logos. We build fancy churches with the most up-to-date technology so that people will be comfortable enough to come to us. We try to be politically correct and approachable so that people will come to us. But, we´re missing a basic point: God said to go into all the world and share His news. ¨Go.¨ It´s just that simple.

I went through a phase in life where I was very stuck on the manifestation of God´s tangible presence. In other words, I was immersed in the idea of God showing up, to where you could see His miracles and feel His presence. I read Tommy Tenney´s book, The Godchasers, and felt like I needed to go to church constantly expecting that He would be there. Now, years later, while that book and that message was important to me in its own time, I marvel at that belief. God´s presence is everywhere! Why do we need high concentrations of the miraculous right before our eyes when there are thousands of kinds of orchids all over the earth? Why would we need to feel the warm fuzzies of His love when He provides not only our needs but the very details of our hearts´desires? I think, like much of religion, the idea of sitting and waiting on God´s manifest presence--which to me means something tangible--is a thief of time. Don´t get me wrong--I believe that it is important to know that God invites us into His presence daily, and we are free to come to Him with the confidence that we are His beloved children. And, I also believe that there is a time that we are called to wait on Him, still and silent. But, why do we think that His presence can only descend within the four walls of a man-made church building? Why do we sit and wait to be filled and filled and filled until we´re bloated with His grace when there are people who don´t even know that He exists?

Although it is a sobering message, I think it is a drastically important one that Isaiah shares in chapter 65:
¨I´ve made myself available to those who haven´t bothered to ask. I´m here, ready to be found by those who haven´t bothered to look. I kept saying´I´m here, I´m right here´ to a nation that ignored me. I reached out day after day to a people who turned their backs on me, people who make wrong turns, who insist on doing things their own way. . . . They say, ´Keep your distance. Don´t touch me. I´m holier than thou.´
I share that scripture because I believe that we miss Him so frequently because we have God in a box of our expectations. We insist that He show Himself to be real in our ways, according to our definitions, and if He doesn´t, we doubt or become angry. And, thus, we miss Him. We say that we´re looking, but we´re doing so with our own demands. We can´t see Him because He doesn´t show Himself the way we think He should. And, I can´t help but wonder if the reason that we miss Him is because we are not being obedient to carry Him (however much we have of Him) to those who have none. We are selfish. We don´t enter the holes of the poor. We don´t visit the imprisoned. We figure it´s their job to come to us. I know that God is infinite, that there is more than enough of Him to go around. But, why should He continue to fill a people who refuse to carry Him forth to others? What sense would it make to reward disobedience?

Carrying Him to others costs us, undoubtedly. It is not an easy work, and it requires death to self daily. But being a missionary does not mean moving to some foreign land, eating weird foods, and speaking a new language. Being a missionary simply means having a heart that depends on God for everything--child-like, helpless, constantly surrendering. It is not a frenzy of action or a quota of souls to meet. I´m not endorsing zeal without wisdom or urgency without God´s guidance. I only encourage sacrifice and dependency, the sweet surrender.

Thus, I rejoice that God has called me to move to the depths. The people here ask me, ¨Isn´t it ugly there?¨ ¨Isn´t it full of poor people?¨ ¨Isn´t it too dangerous for you, a blonde, white woman, to be there?¨ And all I can do is smile because God has so graciously granted me a faith that He gives a full life in the emptiest of places. Worship is not about me. It´s not just about sitting, waiting to be filled. Worship, when the time comes and God directs, is about carrying Him to others, to the empty places so that they can be filled. And when I say as God directs, I want to make clear that we are all called to do this in some form or fashion--we don´t need to wait around on that calling because it´s already been given. What we do need to do is to seek Him so that He can teach us how to love, how to carry His spirit to others, and where.

So, with a humble heart, I ask that you pray for me because I want to selflessly carry Him into the darkest of places. I want to cheerfully move into the depths. I want to reject time-wasting selfishness and find Him where He is to be found--everywhere, and especially in the places where we are least comfortable.

With great love,
Sarah