Prince of Peace

The kings of earth
walk in noble pomp
crusted and laden with finery
protected with layers of men,
swords, palaces, titles,
ceremonies, traditions, and splendor
Ring upon glorious ring
surrounding
frail clay
easily smashed, like a child's toy grown brittle
Strength
protecting
paper-thin weakness

My king, when first he came
lay helpless in the straw
His titles: "bastard","refugee", "orphan", "working man"
paper thin frailty
plastered against broken world
Casing of vulnerability
protecting
unfathomable, majestic space

Do you wonder that I love him?

The kings of earth prove their power
flaunt their might
take their rights
casually
As a man plucks a plum from
a passing tree
consumes the juicy sweetness
and tosses the pit away

My king
made himself nothing
surrendered every right
As a hungry man plucks the last plum
from his own tree
and gives it to a beggar
saying, "take the pit,
and plant it. then you also
will have plums to give away"

Do you wonder that I love him?
For such a man
to drop your nets, still dripping, and pad
barefoot
down the street after him
your eyes fixed to his back--
this is the only reasonable response

Such a man you follow to the end of the world
and
arriving there with nothing,
count yourself rich

Such a god you would never
dare to imagine in your wildest
dreams--only kneel, voiceless
in worship
when He appears

Reflections on Poverty and Possibilities

God seems to speak with reoccurring themes in my life.  I'm pretty sure I'm not exceptional in this regard.  It's lovely to have that "ooohh" moment when you realize that the brush strokes aren't random, but are actually pieces of the whole...and God being incredibly patient and painstaking...sometimes it's years down the road that you realize that something meant far more than you realized at the time. 

When I posted on "Possibilities", mostly it was just because I had been reading Hard Times and liked the quote.  But I've come to realize those thoughts are related to the other ways that God has been changing the way that I see ministry and my place in it.

I've been reading in a book called When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fickkert. (Excellent book--I highly recommend it).

http://www.whenhelpinghurts.org/book.php

The book has given me a lot of food for thought...not only relating to anti-poverty efforts, but to ministry in general and has linked up with other things that God has been teaching me this summer.  Point 1: I am not the answer. (Shamelessly stolen from Kathy Ryan;p)

"until we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work with low-income people is likely to do far more harm than good"--When Helping Hurts

When I try to fill all the needs that I see from my own strength, it's presumptuous--a sin as a friend of mine points out--and also ineffective.  If Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing, how arrogant of me to think that I can and should try to speak to every need that I see!  I am here for Him to work through me.  Not to say that there won't be a cost, but it's the difference between joyous work and burdensome, between dancing and drudgery.  Side note: working in the kitchen is one of the best places that I know for character development:)  Also, God is not planning to do all His work in the world through me!  Which brings me to...

Point 2: Labor in ministry from the standpoint of humility and honor.

"We are not bringing Christ to poor communities. He has been active in these communities since the creation of the world, sustaining them "by his powerful word" (Heb. 1:3). Hence, a significant part of working in poor communities involves discovering and appreciating what God has been doing there for a long time! This should give us a sense of humility and awe as we enter poor communities, for part of what we see there reflects the very hand of God.  Of course, the residents of these communities may not recognize that God has been at work.  In fact, they might not even know who God is.  So part of our task may include introducing the community to who God is and to helping them to appreciate all that He has been doing for them since the creation of the world." --When Helping Hurts

Nobody likes to have someone trying to fix them.  This applies beyond the borders of working with poor communities. May we fear God and walk towards those we minister to honoring the image of God that they bear, honoring their own responsibility and the freedom that God has given them, honoring the work of God in their life, honoring the secret name given by God that they alone will know.

And finally Point 3: God values and honors me also.

Will you believe that the very first post on this blog (Psalm 8) addresses this?  Going back to the whole process thing, I didn't actually figure out that honor and humility are the themes of the Psalm till outreach this past spring.  And He is still teaching me to believe those very things about myself. Humility--who I am and who I'm not.  Honor--that He values and trusts me despite my brokenness and finiteness.

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ALMIGHTY God, who hast poured upon us the new light of thine incarnate Word; Grant that the same light enkindled in our hearts may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Book of Common Prayer

Incarnation

"If we who are the body of Christ are not Jesus, who will ever be? The world has need of the presence of Jesus, in the word of the gospels, in the holy bread and wine, and in us. Somewhere in all the cynicisms and disappointments that bind and stunt their lives, men need to find a living Jesus, one who can hear their pain and understand their grief and shame; someone to be the love of God with them. It has to be a poor man...doesn't it? To touch and heal the pain of men's poverty? I mean all kinds of poverty: the poverty of their need, and their brokenheartedness, of their sin...It would need a man poor in spirit and poor and means to comfort the loneliness of the poor. It is not possible for a rich man's hand to dry the tears of the poor--is it?"

The Hawk and the Dove Trilogy, Penelope Wilcock.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Jesus

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Possibilities

"So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power.  It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions.  There is no mystery in  it; there is an unfathomable mystery in the meanest of them, for ever.--Supposing we were to reserve our arithmetic for material objects, and to govern these awful unknown quantities by other means!"   

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”

C. S. Lewis

 

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