tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3352677.post112675018996224702..comments2024-03-11T05:57:18.030-04:00Comments on Sacraments Wholesale: Deacon Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14981953522017981083noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3352677.post-1127586390705259562005-09-24T14:26:00.000-04:002005-09-24T14:26:00.000-04:00Deacon Tim,I happened across your very interesting...Deacon Tim,<BR/><BR/>I happened across your very interesting take on Katrina by accident last weekend and I can not get your comments out of my head and my heart. You see, I have been working in an evacuee camp for about three weeks now. Almost all of the people in this camp are from the poorest areas of New Orleans. There is a difference of day and night between the lives that they lead (or maybe I should say "led") and the life that I lead. Our cultures are so different that at times we have trouble communicating even though we are supposedly both speaking English. Sometimes, I feel like when I enter this camp, I enter a different world. For example, a little girl followed me around until she got up the courage to ask if she could touch my long blonde hair. She had never seen anything like it before (exept on TV). Blonde-haired people are non-existant in her small world. I was amazed to find that some of the older people had never been beyond walking distance of the place they were born, not even catching a bus across town. What a scary experience to be plucked up and transported 500 miles away to a world that is so culturally and physically different. Although I absolutely love the hilly, forested rural church camp full of deer and squirrel, they feel uncomfortable and cut off from the urban sites and sounds they are more familiar with. And the monstor mounds of what I consider really good food served three times a day by the kind camp staff was just too much for them. More than once I was told, "I never had three meals a day before. Your kind of food is messing with my bowels."<BR/><BR/>But in spite of the differences of culture, I have learned so much from them. I have learned to love sinners. Yes, I mean love, not sympathize with their misfortune, or feel concern for their future, but love, the kind that sacrifices, the kind that weeps the kind that laughs at shared jokes. And yes, I mean sinners, too. I have led a sheltered life, I guess, because the sin I see in the lives of the people in this camp is above and beyond anything that I knew existed in the borders of our "Christianized" country. My heart is terribly, terribly conflicted. Now,I really do understand the idea of hating the sin and loving the sinner.<BR/><BR/>When I leave the camp and return to my judgemental, middle-class, suburban, and dare I say "white" world, I hear whispers around me in the grocery store and at the school and in the Sunday School class. In the midst of the hushed conversationss I hear phrases like, "those kind of people" and "God's judgement" and "that filth". <BR/><BR/>Don't get me wrong. The whisperers are good folks. They reached into their pockets and gave. The reached deep and gave big to those "poor people" because God wanted them to. But the people with whispered conversations do not know. They are ignorant. They do not see. They are blind. They can can not envision and conceive the GRACE and MERCY inside the camps. They say judgement. But I FEEL mercy. There is such a razor-thin line between the two and I really wonder if they are not the two faces of the proverbial coin. <BR/><BR/>I felt mercy when she came and asked me if I was representing the Lord and if I would tell her about Him. She was on drugs and in a lifestyle of sexual sin. She was hungry for Him. She is healing in His Word every day as I go and read it to her.<BR/><BR/>I felt mercy when he grasped my hand and smiled a snaggled toothed grin that must have lit up heaven. He just smiled all over. If he had been in the body of a dog, he would have been wagging his tail. He told me how for the first time in his life he had time to study the scriptures for 2-3 hours a day. Forget the fact that he owned nothing of material goods anymore. He owned the Lord. He was spending his time getting ready to go back to New Orleans and be a light.<BR/><BR/>I felt mercy, when with her wrinkled old hand, she stroked my face and hair and crooned over me with an intimacy that none has exhibited since my own dear grandmother died. When she boarded the bus to join her husband in another state, and we both cried. The tears were bitter, sweet. We know we'll meet again. Someday. <BR/><BR/>I felt mercy when her chubby little-girl hand braided my long blonde hair while I told her about a man who took a ride in the belly of a fish because he hated the people in another place who were very different from him. She understood about the worm. So did I.<BR/><BR/>You were right about that early worm. <BR/><BR/>Thanks for expressing the thoughts that I was thinking.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3352677.post-1126911377167920132005-09-16T18:56:00.000-04:002005-09-16T18:56:00.000-04:00Thank you, Hector. I do believe that this horrific...Thank you, Hector. I do believe that this horrific tragedy will allow us to begin thinking about the least of Jesus little ones. Perhaps even we self-centered rich American Christians can repent?Deacon Timhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14981953522017981083noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3352677.post-1126817942983722262005-09-15T16:59:00.000-04:002005-09-15T16:59:00.000-04:00I know that God doesn't create these disasters, bu...I know that God doesn't create these disasters, but sometimes I think that we need experiences like this and 9-11 to remind us of the things that matter the most. There's is so much transformation of the heart and increase of compassion! Sometimes we n eed pain to melt the fake castles and walls we create around us. Thanks for sharing!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com