Monday, January 26, 2015

The Other "Tenth" of the Law

Everybody wants to be in control of something be it our children, our jobs, our finances, or our fate. We like having a firm hand on the things that are sometimes uncertain. One thing we have realized being here in Kenya is how much we take ownership for granted in the states. A few weeks after de-embarked from our 24 hr plane ride we realized that apart from the clothes on our back, and what little we carried in our suitcases, we owned nothing. Initially, for me at least, this was a somewhat freeing concept. No bills to pay, no maintenance of things falling apart, no worrying about how to protect or lose once investment nothing tying us down to any one particular area, we were quite literally free to go and share with people in whichever realm we saw needed help.

However, as some days went by we started to realize how hard not owning something really is. It is hard not to have a place to call your home, when you are not certain where you will lay your head at night. Somewhere you can make your nest, decorate, make comfortable, and settle in. Audrey first noticed and expressed these sentiments and while at first I could not echo them verbally at the time, I think my heart was resonating with them along the same lines. There seems to be a comfort we find in ownership. And I do not think this is merely a materialistic comfort or one that is isolated to our American culture either. This seems to be a cross-cultural imperative from what I can see, and while there may be some people groups I have overlooked I think this somewhat universal. We all like having stuff, preparing for the times of want, and being comfortable in the times of plenty. Whether you are a newly wed making your bridal registry of all thing things you may need for your new life, or a doomsday preparer with your fallout shelter, stockpile of beans and SPAM, or an Kenyan stockpiling on radios and televisions left behind when you do not have electricity. We all seem to like to own stuff, even if we do not have the means to use it right away. 

 
This has been an interesting transition in the missionary life. And somewhat of an internal struggle and stressor we are slowly learning to overcome. Can we truly give away all our possessions and follow him as he commands? This is one of the man reasons I believe it was so hard for that rich young ruler to follow Jesus. The further you go down this road, the more things you have owned, and the more solace you feel in this ownership, the harder it is to break away. Audrey and I are somewhat fortunate in the fact that we are young and inexperience to never have owned too many things. I have owned clothes, a car, and some appliances but that is about all we had yet. But even giving up these things was hard in a society that measures success by owning your own house, cars, and 2.5 kids. One is always, although many times unknowingly, struggling towards this end. Is this not the life, love, and pursuit of happiness for which we yearn?

This has been a constant thought over these last few months and it has resurfaced since recently we bought a car, our first “real” possession here you could say. Not that it is really ours, the title is in our teammate’s name, and the finances belong to The Antioch Partners, but it is ours during our work here. And although I hate myself for it, my materialistic side of myself finds some relief in this. In having somewhere to store and secure my stuff, to have some certainty that I can travel from point A to B with little trouble or interference. To not worry about the uncertainty or the “what ifs?” It has been nice. And as we head down to Kimana today to begin looking for houses I find myself both relieved and frustrated all at the same time. We will finally have somewhere to call our own, to rest, to be secure. Yet where in scripture does Christ ever call us to be secure? In fact, at least to me, it quite often seems the opposite. Is it not uncertainty what it is all about? Is that not the premise of faith being uncertain but trusting, hoping? Sure we need to rest, not in our (quite literally in our case) earthen home, but in His presence. We need security, not of weapons and walls but of our identity in Christ. We do not need something but Someone to call our own. So my prayer today, both for myself, our team, and for you, is that we do find comfort, rest, security but that we find it in Him. That we can sort through all of the different ways we try to go about it ourselves securing our own happiness and can work outside of those walls and make ourselves uncomfortable enough to find where our true security lies.