Every so often I have to catch up with my Google Reader account and every so often instead of writing something and storing for posting later I have to post it.
When I read the real blogs of real people in real situations, my own situation and issues seems almost fake when forced into a reality beyond me. Joey at Missions and Theology teaches and works in South East Asia. He and his wife recently adopted Thin Yannat a little girl earlier kidnapped in another harrowing episode. But this episode stunned me. (read it here)
We didn’t have the chance to know his name. We only know him as Thin Yannat’s father. He was a living skeleton—with sunken eyes and protruding bones. He was suffering from AIDS. ...I'm ashamed of my own struggles, ashamed of the media and that it focuses on a failing stock market: The failure of vast corporations to make their predicted profits. I am ashamed when I read about Thin Yannat a little girl of an illegal migrant. This takes even greater focus when in my D.min where I've been working on units about theological reflection and practical theology. What is all this enterprise of academia about unless it deals with a tangible reality? This afternoon my assistant and co-worker Carny in my English Conversation class drew a card which asked What would you do if you had a magic wand? She simply said Abolish poverty! That was both familiar and also rattled my world. What's my or your life all about? Is it real and authentic? Does it touch tangible reality?
The Pastor refused to minister to a dying man and it made us angry. Narlin and I were their teachers and we were supposed to be responsible for teaching these local pastors about ministering to the dying people. However, we unbalancedly focused on Biblical studies in expense of teaching them practical theology. The incident demonstrates the failure of imbalance teaching. What good is biblical knowledge when you cannot minister to the people in a time they badly needed it? Perhaps we wept because we failed to teach these people. ...
What are we going to do with the dead body of an illegal migrant who died of AIDS...?
The last week or so I spent time with Proverbs 30. I'd never sat with it before, never contemplated nor studied it. It starts "I am weary, O God " and repeats it. "Surely I am too stupid ..." Then it moves on to say "Two things I ask of you ... remove far from me falsehood and lying. Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with the food that I need." I wrestled with my tangled reality as I wondered about my own financial support raising and I wrote in my journal " I do feel stupid and frustrated at the same time!"
Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless. As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them? ... Naked a man comes from his mother's womb, and as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand. Ecclesiastes 5:10-11, 15
