“Maybe the wells that give life and love are drying out? Maybe I need to find new wells? Why do I need to stay at a dry well, what’s the point? Where are wells of flowing love?”
These are questions I asked a few weeks ago. It was a time of confusion and disorientation
for me. Feeling directionless. Feeling that relationships were stagnating.
In trying to surrender to God, I have lived out the question, and have come upon some wells that are changing my faith and me. Here are 3 stories.
1.
There are words in life that never leave us. There are moments in life that forever shape us.
On the bare concrete floor of a neighbor’s home, we shared stories. I go and visit once a week, she says I am like a son. This time, I clearly remember thinking, “Is this relationship at stagnation, what else do we have to offer each other?”
This time, our faith became a central topic, we asked questions back and forth about the Muslim and Christian faith. This came up naturally and shocked me. I did not expect this conversation with her. Furthermore, we understood each other extraordinary well for using Indonesian. Questions like: “how often do you have to pray each day?” are very common when I meet Muslims. However, this neighbor went a big step further and shared this:
“My neighbor who was thinking of becoming a Christian is receiving lots of stuff from a Christian. Also, when I was begging, some Christians told me that they would help me if I became a Christian. Jason, I’m confused. Why do I need to become a Christian for me to get help from Christians?”
In some ways it’s a question that I have always wanted asked. In other ways, it’s a question I dread.
It’s a question I long to hear because, I echo the same question in my mind when I look around the world of missions and social service. Furthermore, I have encountered this reality in the church here. This issue is vastly complex, layers of theological, development, historical and contextual issues intertwine so that I daily stare lost into Indonesian landscape and religion and poverty.
I cried trying to answer this question. There are few questions that hit closer to my heart. I asked for forgiveness. And said that was not the way things are supposed to be. The Christian life follows Jesus and Jesus did not do that.
But, the answer to the question isn’t the point right now—although that makes for a lively discussion. What is important is that my concern for having a productive relationship where I am learning, growing and doing at a desirable speed. Generally, that means faster than the way relationships form and blossom here. Just being there on the floor of my neighbor’s home is all the matters. That speaks far more about Jesus than any Indonesian phrase I can muster. And the very fact that she could ask that question, speaks volumes of what slow patient relationship building leads to. Deep wells of mutual blessing.
2.
This is an excerpt from a reflection I wrote:
The night that the youth leadership planned the upcoming years was a remarkable experience. That is what happens over and over again here, I debate joining a certain event and then I attend and my assumptions for it are completely overturned. The role of the youth pastor was fascinating at this meeting. The youth lead there way through the issues of planning, while the pastor at times offered guidance, and some alternatives to their thoughts. In the end, it was up to the youth. When specific planning had to be done for the special youth events of the upcoming year, the pastor did not tell the youth how this could be best done. Rather, the pastor asked for various perspectives on decision-making and why each youth leader thought their model of decision-making was better. This process of empowering the youth was not rushed, but took as long as all voices were heard and consensus could be reached. An unexpected learning opportunity for me. I am learning lots from observing and not forcing my way of leading and acting upon the youth. The youth are teaching me more than I am teaching them—a cross-cultural success!
This illustrates a somewhat expected reality here. I learn more from Indonesians, than I can teach and give to them. It is how cross-cultural mission trips should go. I knew this before coming here, I pray over this, and often feel much freedom and joy in my role as a foreigner coming to a church and culture so different then my own. However, it is not easy to always accept this role of observer and follower. However, I am uncomfortable trying to explain my time in Indonesia to my home church and to those whom have sponsored me. I feel like they expect that I accomplish specific tasks and “get things done.” In short, they expect and I am tempted to at times to make sure that I am effective in the North American sense of the word. There is pride in accomplishing things and doing more than listening and allowing others to decide and lead. I guess that this is what being a pastor is about.”
3.
Host family. Before coming this year in Indonesia, I do not know if I ever gave my future host family more than 5 seconds of thought. That has proved to be a massive underestimation of the impact of a host family upon my experience in Indonesia, and certainly for every other SALT position.
My host family has been a place of great highs and some lows. The way of life for my whole family is radically different then my family at home. However, it is the huge differences between the way I see life and live it compared to my host mothers where great joy and frustration lie. Indonesia’s recent acceleration into increased modernization and industrialization means that the current youth/young adult’s generation is growing up in a very different world than their parents. You may think that in Canada, a gap like that exists, but it is tiny compared to Indonesia. I just accentuate this gap even more.
Among many things in this gap, is a difference having to do with love. The way I know family love at home is so different here than at home. This is also true for friendships. The best way I can pinpoint it is to use this example.
The following questions are ways that we love people at home:
“What did you do today?”
“What did you think about your experience…?”
“What will you do later or tomorrow?”
“How was this event…?”
It is through these questions that can take different levels of intimacy that we show we care and are interested in the lives of each other.
Well, all of those questions are rarely asked to me here. I miss those questions and the conversation that comes from it. I try to ask those questions here, a range of confused faces to short quick answers is the average response.
So back to my host mothers, they ask very few questions in general. If a question is asked it is either “already showered?” or “already eat?” Not the kind of questions that beckon a lengthy conversation. Life is about work. Getting up at 5am and going to bed at 10pm, with a mix of work, sitting around and eating. If there is an important church event, that interrupts the rhythm of life. So my free-spirited, adventurous and talkative self has run into a few walls in the process of relationship building with my host mothers. So I asked me self a few weeks ago, “is the well that gives life in my host family drying up?”
I have learned and been saturated in an environment of love at home and in university. However, what I experience there is one way of loving. Rarely do people asks questions that signal to me there interest in my life or rarely do I hear compliments and encouragement, but that is just not the culture here.
The love given by people here is not less full, but it feels that way sometimes. The love of the people here is different and it takes a long time to know it, taste and embrace it. God created a plethora of cultures and these cultures each have unique and truly beautiful ways of loving each other. Indonesian love is very full. I can see it filling in gaps in my love. How wide, deep and high Jesus’ love is has been marvelously revealed in my host mothers whom truly to care and want the best for me. They make sure I leave the home wearing good tidy clothes, make sure I am never hungry, make sure to praise God for all things, make sure that I get a trim my shaggy hair (true story…haha). These are the ways that they love fully and the ways that they live out Christ’s love within them.
God's love has always been the same; however I am finding a new part of that giant heart of Love.
Around Christmas I really felt that the wells of love and life that could be given to me were drying up. I did not know where these wells of love could come from. I couldn't see how my family could be life giving, and relationships felt stagnant.
I have been seeing the water from these wells all along--I just didn't know that it was waters of love and life. I just didn't recognize it. Now I taste it and know that this is God's love.
People here are also learning how God's love works through me.....in ways that they have never seen before. It's mutual--the way cross-cultural experience should be. It's just so so easy to run around thinking that I know what love is and I call point and name it when I see it. God's love is NEVER that simple.
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” ~~Ephesians 3:16-19
