I have been shaped and influenced by motion picture special efffects and speculative fiction. I have a very fertile imagination when it comes to things spiritual and supernatural. When I think about things like “spiritual warfare” I have vivid images of confrontations with the hordes of hell, the thundering clash of titanic armies like in “the Return of the King” and “the Lion, the Witch , and the Wardrobe.” Even lonely prayer vigils become herioic exploits as small groups of the faithful intercede against a great flood of enveloping, stygian darkness. It’s all quite epic.
Then things happen to pull me out of my imagination and into the everyday world where good strives to overcome evil.
I was waking up from my afternoon coma. I was listening to the boys play and my wife talking on the phone. Snatches of my wife’s conversation drifted into my semi-consciousness and pulled me into wakefulness. Bits and pieces of phrases like “eviction”, “children”, “help”, etc floated into the clearing fog. When my wife came in to get me up I got the full story of a family whose kids had been visting Open Table that had been evicted from their apartment. The kids came home from school to find their stuff thrown out of the sidewalk. Their mother was out of town working.
Into this nightmare strode a handful of women to take care of the kids, and problem solve what to do with all their worldly possession before folks descended on it to pillage what they wanted. I was amazed and impressed with the division of labor to look for social services, to get help moving the possessions and storing them at the church.
What took me to my knees in worship was the unthinking assumptions that we would care for them and that these children would be loved in a hard time. These women didn’t hesitate to jump into the unknown and face whatever the crisis would bring.
I stayed home cooking macaroni and cheese for the boys as my wife sped off in the van to jump into the fray. I prayed and prayed not knowing if we would have extra guests for a while, or if there we enough people to help, or if things would get confrontational. It was a pecular helplessness.
My wife called later with stories of how the Lord brought folks with large trucks to help move the stuff, provided a place to stay as the family and the Christian’s in their lives tried to solve the real, long-term issues.
It wasn’t hordes of Orcs and Minotaurs, dueling dragons, or magic swords. It was compassion and love and determination in the face of despair. It was ordinary people stepping into crisis. Heather talked about how amazing Virginia and Sandee are at ministering in this world of finanical insecurity. Virginia and Sandee are two of the women with Cross-Cultural Ministries who are teaching us how to live and minister in the area where the Lord has taken us. I don’t appreciate how much courage and love it takes to minister to people who live on the border of the wastelands of despair in a society of plenty until moments like this happen. God is good to have brought us along side such faithful servants and teachers.
No special effects. No sound track. No million dollar budgets. But heroes, regular people stepping into real lives when it matters. They don’t have to, except for the example of Christ and the love of Christ.
