Some of the questions we struggled with while in Freetown were:
‘How will our lives be different than before we experienced the life and people of Freetown?’ and ‘How can we honor our 2 billion poor neighbors, when we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world?’
They are questions we still struggle with and don’t have many answers to. And as we continue on this journey to the heart of God, more questions about how we live our lives continually arise.
Shane Claiborne describes what we are feeling in his book, The Irresistible Revolution:
When we truly encounter Jesus and the poor, we may still be a tax collector, but we will be a different kind of tax collector. We may still be a doctor, but we will be a different kind of doctor… Many of us feel an inner collision between the old life and the new one.
And I believe that is exactly where Ryan and I are. When we went to Freetown, we wanted to encounter God’s heart for the poor (Matthew 25:32-46) and in turn grow in our understanding of how to live our lives in light of that. What we didn’t realize is that it is a life long process and even though we’ve left the ‘third world’, it hasn’t left us. We can’t seem to shake from our thoughts how so many people around the world are presently living and how we surround ourselves in so much comfort. So, just as Shane describes, we may still be ‘American’, we just want to be a different kind of ‘American’.
Since returning, Ryan keeps telling me of these seemingly small things he wants us to do to remember our friends in Sierra Leone and others living in poverty around the world. But, we never seem to do them, because well… we’re human and get caught up in the day-to-day average American life and fall in the rut of doing things the way we always did them before.
So, in an attempt to help keep us to actually doing this, I thought it would be a fun idea to turn it into a ’series’ and share what we’re doing with others. Who knows, however small it may seem, maybe it will get us all thinking together of how we can live differently…. and my hope is that, along the way, God will open our eyes to ways we can truly honor our neighbors.
And just so you know, we are open for all kinds of ideas, thoughts, suggestions and comments. We’d love to hear how other people are trying to do this, whether it be big or small, silly or serious.
Soon we’ll post our idea is for this week!
