Ah, uncertainty! Add to that the fact that my house is covered in a sea of boxes (we have to be out by Monday, after that we'll be homeless for a little while)... and the fact that my dear grandma is fighting a vicious cancer and that my next few months are filled with stacks of question marks, from where exactly we are going to be when this summer to where we'll be living when we return (the particular address in Baltimore)... life feels very up in the air. James 4 hits home again.
But back to the bread. I first met my Nigerian friend last fall at a women's retreat and then ran into her a couple months ago while out walking with J and remembered that I had wanted to get to know her this year, and then it took me til last weekend to actually get J and I together with her and her husband for dinner. J asked a very insightful question about what their highs and lows from their time in the US had been, and of course for both of them the lows were that Americans are so busy and bad at forming relationships (my words, they were a little more diplomatic)... and so of course they have felt so lonely and isolated here. I could have wept at the missed opportunity to be great friends with them all year. (They are totally fantastic people.) But no, I was an American all year.
I had brought homemade bread to dinner and Grace (my friend) nearly begged me to teach her to make it. Of course we are moving and I am trying to finish the final changes to our book MS and may or may not be going to Nigeria any time... but I felt like I really had to make time for some bread making this week. So this morning I went down to her place and we mixed it and tonight I went back to help her shape and bake it. And resisted the urge to rush home while it did the final rise, and baked. Instead, we sat and talked. I am so glad I did.
So many things have me thinking and so many things have me feeling utterly humbled. Like that Grace and her husband and two kids will be moving to Fort Worth, TX (for her husband to do a PhD at Southwestern Seminary), carrying what they can fit into their minivan. Meanwhile I am struggling for weeks to get all my stuff packed up and totally miserable with all the work of packing and wondering if it will fit into the storage unit and fit into the 16-foot moving van. And feeling virtuous because my couch is old and I hate it. I mean, it's not like all my stuff is shiny and new. Even if I do all by myself have enough stuff to outfit an entire African village. (I can't blame J the Minimalist, it is really my stuff that is creating the stuff problem.)
We also talked about the hardness of heart of the American church, how we delude ourselves into thinking that we are so poor and have nothing to give when we are so rich, rich, rich. These are my words; Grace is mostly just baffled by it. She and Zachs really need support; they are going to Texas not knowing how they will afford to make the move or how they will outfit their house once they get there, or how they will pay for their expenses month to month. I encouraged her to start writing regular letters and cultivating supporters here, and tried to explain what I thought would communicate to Americans. (She feels uncomfortable with asking people as individuals for support, since this would never be done in Nigeria. She said if she and Zachs were in Nigeria right now, of course everyone would know they needed money for their move, and would just contribute without being asked. So I am encouraging her towards a more direct approach with her American friends.)
In the midst of all this, Grace told me that a pastor they knew had just been killed in a car accident (ironically, on the way back from the funeral of another pastor's wife), and his wife and 4 kids are left without support. So Grace is trying to figure out how she can stretch her grocery budget far enough to send some of it to this woman every month to help her feed her family. This is the woman who really has no idea how she will be putting food on the table for her own family next year. I strongly encouraged her to put a little box in the newsletter about this woman's need, and pray one of their friends has a soft heart to respond.
Grace has such an amazing heart for widows, and stories that make me cry even after I have heard them a few times. In Nigeria her husband Zachs is a pastor, and a few years ago she decided to invite the widows of the church to her house to celebrate Zachs' birthday. Imagine, having a party and inviting the poor and the widows! That is exactly what they did. The widows were so afraid because they thought the pastor must be angry with them or must have harsh words about some reported misconduct. (Widows in Africa are often quite young and often accused of working as prostitutes, which some do, out of desperation.) They were so surprised to show up and find they were the guests of honor. From that day they started meeting together regularly in a kind of widows' association, to support each other. When Zachs came to the US to go to school they gave him a parting gift of a sizable amount of money (for them) that they had scraped together. They told him, "You are doing this for us." And they committed themselves to praying for him and his family during their time in the US. I tell Grace she's so lucky to have an army of godly widows praying for her!
As God would have it Grace and Zachs are moving to Fort Worth, where we have friends that I hope can help them move in and get connected to a church that can support them. I keep thinking that it should be a no brainer, for the body of Christ to reach out to a couple like this and meet their physical needs. I'm not so sure in the US it will be a no brainer, which kind of breaks my heart. Why are we so hard-hearted and slow to give? What if we as the Body of Christ were sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit to see needs within the Body and respond, without having to be told what the needs were? I don't think directness is all bad, nor is a desire to know that our resources are well used. I kept stressing with Grace that Americans are deeply pragmatic.
But what if God were like that, of only giving to us when he was sure His gifts would be well and correctly used, no waste, appropriate gratitude. When God chose to gift me with a fine mind, a (mostly) healthy body, and the birthright of a wonderful family who were citizens of a rich country, he didn't make these things conditional on whether I would always use them correctly. Because I certainly don't. And in spite of my repeated ingratitude and selfish waste and misuse of the gifts he has given me, he just keeps on filling my path with gifts.
So if our God can be so incredibly generous to those of us who least deserve it (which is all of us), why can't we find it in our hearts to be a little more generous with each other? It sure must break God's heart.
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