“the followers of Jesus are no longer faced with a decision. The only decision possible for them has already been made. Now they have to be what they are, or they are not following Jesus. The followers are the visible community of faith; their discipleship is a visible act which separates them from the world—or it is not discipleship. And discipleship is as visible as light in the night, as a mountain in the flatland.
To flee into invisibility is to deny the call. Any community of Jesus which wants to be invisible is no longer a community that follows him.”
— Stanley Hauerwas
[video]
It may be too strong to say that we’re always sinning or not sinning.
I did, in fact, once make that statement. Years ago. It cannot really be defended or justified.
After some conversations and thinking today, I would rather put forth this:
We’re constantly being drawn towards Christ and his vision for life or we’re being distracted from Christ and his vision for life.
Or,
We either perpetually have an ear turned towards the Holy Spirit’s wooing & formation or we don’t.
Much to our dismay and dislike, we’re never in neutral.
Being in neutral is actually a state of distraction.
Do you routinely take time to understand which way your life is slanted? Towards Christ or distracted? Do you have times, moments, and activities in your week that reorient you, people in your life that help calibrate you?
If you don’t you should.
“
What’s the point of telling the story of Jesus as the climax of the story of Israel?
What relevance has that got to the rest of the human race and to the wider world?…
Understand this point, and you will understand everything:
In Israel’s scriptures, the reason Israel’s story matters is that the creator of the world has chosen and called Israel to be the people through whom he will redeem the world. The call of Abraham is the answer to the sin of Adam. Israel’s story is thus the microcosm and beating heart of the world’s story, but also its ultimate saving energy. What God does for Israel is what God is doing in relation to the whole world…Grasp that, and you have a pathway into the heart of the New Testament.
” —“Always-on/always-on-you devices provide three powerful fantasies: that we will always be heard; that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; and that we never have to be alone. Indeed our new devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved.” —
Sherry Turkle, “The Flight from Conversation”
Wow. This article overwhelmed me and punched me in the gut. Then it laughed at me. Please take a few minutes to read it and consider.
There we were, on our last day in the orphanage. After a busy morning of goodbye parties, playing with kids, giving gifts to caregivers, and other things, Ashley and I found ourselves sitting on a couch quietly interacting with Yeni in the common room.
A couple of birth parents were at the orphanage that day, one a mother in town to meet a family before they took their new little boy home, the other a single father in town for his court date where he told an Ethiopian judge he intended to wave his right as a parent.
The father’s son was there that day and they got to share a few last moments and lunch together before they’d likely never meet again.
As our family sat on the couch, this little boy who is probably young elementary school age walked into the room and started playing with the pile of toys on the coffee table in front of us. The day had wound down, most of the children were already taking naps, and I had assumed the birth parents were back in the car with the social worker on their way to the village.
But then, unexpectedly, the boy’s father slowly crept through the open glass door behind us.
He walked up to his son, pulled out 5 birr (about 17 birr equals 1 US dollar), showed it to the little boy, and tucked it in his pocket.
He then looked at us, gave us the universal sign for “shhhhhhhh,” and disappeared the way he came.
It’s so simple, yet it blows my mind. And I get it.
But it’s still difficult. It’s difficult because it reinforces that these children, even my child, have parents that love and care for them and want the best for them, yet they couldn’t keep them.
They were not orphaned by death or destruction or volatile circumstances.
They were orphaned by the tragedy of poverty. Of unsustainable life.
I haven’t figured out what it means, or how to reconcile it, or if I even need to. But every time I re-live it in my head, every time I see that poor, broken-hearted, rail-thin man slip that money in his son’s pocket and give him one final kiss on the forehead, it breaks my heart. It seems so cruel.
And yet I know, because I’m experiencing it now, that new life comes from hard things. But it doesn’t make them easier.
I haven’t written anything about our experience in Ethiopia, and I’ve stayed away from writing about the transition of Yeni, our adopted daughter, into our home over the past 10 days or so.
It’s not for lack of stories to tell, or insights to share, or moments to capture. Quite the opposite actually—I don’t think short posts and videos and pictures could tell much of the roller-coaster-like reality that we’ve been facing.
We all know those people, and if we’re honest we all are those people, who use Facebook & Twitter to take every opportunity to show their “friends” how awesome their family is, how wonderful their spouse is, how their daughter is the cutest girl in the whole world, how their son is a fabulous speller. Perhaps their lives are so overwhelmingly awesome that they have to escape it to spend so much time on Facebook or their heads will explode.
I don’t know.
But what I do know is this: though most people have avoided this conversation, at least in person, like the plague, the reality is that transitioning a two year old who doesn’t know you and doesn’t speak your language and has spent her entire life in an orphanage into your little American family is hard. Hard.
So I’ve refused to use Facebook and Twitter to daily post about how great this is, and “oh here’s a video of this awesomeness,” though my wife & I will both admit that we’ve done it once or twice. We’re only human, after all.
But I mean to say that I have, very intentionally, refrained from using social media to paint this picture of how wonderful things are when they are, quite honestly, sometimes painful. And, if you’re wondering, I also refuse to use social media to lament all day long, therefore there’s been next to no posting.
Now this isn’t to say that we are overwhelmed, or disappointed, or regretful. Again, quite the opposite. We are incredibly blessed. Incredibly empowered to be like Jesus to this new addition to our family, no matter how hard she unintentionally tries to be frustrating.
Though we didn’t share it often in public, Ashley & I both knew this is what we were in for. We had no grand delusions of pie-in-the-sky easiness, or dreams of continuing our life as-was without making major adjustments. I mean, come on, going from one kid to two kids is a hard move, adoption or not. So while we have had hard moments, we are adjusting. We are getting used to this new rhythm of living slowly, with more structure and less willy-nilly hop in the car and drag our one kid with us.
Life is not easy, and neither is adoption. But life is a gift, and a blessing, and adoption is every much the same. We are incredibly thankful for Yeni, and for this process, and for all of our friends & family that helped us bring her home in a myriad of ways. We especially continue to covet your prayers and support.
Tonight when I was in the drugstore picking up some ringworm medicine, I paused in the aisle when I remembered a particularly poignant moment in the orphanage on our last visit. I paused, I stood still, and tears rolled down my face as I considered what unfolded in front of our eyes.
And that story will actually be the content of my first official post about our trip. Stay tuned.
We’re coming home.
Yeni & Amare’s “thank you” party for all of the workers at the orphanage.
Well hello, beautiful.