A Place at the Table, day 13

What do we do with the brokenness of the world?  It has become so broken that most of us assume that it is irreparable.  I think that's one of the primary reasons that the church withdraws inside its four walls.  The darkness seems so dark and the world seems so unredeemable that we just hunker down and do our best to protect ourselves and our kids and our friends.  That's why we have created an entire Christian subculture that makes it almost unnecessary to even deal with the world.  We can send our kids to private Christian schools and listen to only Christian music while driving them to those Christian schools.  We can have our Christian athletic leagues to work out our bodies while our kids are in Christian after-school care.  I'm waiting for somebody to develop a Christian automobile so that we won't have to pour our hard-earned Christian dollars into some heathen's pockets.  But that rant is another blog for another day.

Back to my original question about brokenness.  Sometimes I wonder if we aren't just repeating Biblical stories -- except in this case we're not the heroes that we like to portray ourselves as.  I am reminded of the story of the twelve spies who checked out the Promised Land for the Israelites.  You might remember the song: "Twelve men went to spy on Canaan; ten were bad and two were good.  What did they see when they spied on Canaan?  Ten were bad and two were good.  Some saw giants big and tall; some saw grapes and clusters fa-a-all; some saw God rules over all.  Ten were bad and two were good."  While you might not know the song (it has cool actions, too, that I'll show you if you ask!), you probably know the story.  But what does that have to do with us?

Everything.  We find ourselves at a crossroads.  Too many of us are busy playing the role of the ten bad guys.  We look out over the world and we see how jacked up everything is and we decide that the darkness is more powerful than the light.  We decide that evil has won and will continue to win.  And we forget the redemption of Jesus and that fact that "God rules over all."  We forget that the image used by Paul for this crazy little thing called church is "the body of Christ."  WE are to be the redemption of the world.  WE are to shine light into darkness and realize that that darkness will never be able to overcome light (John 1).  But what does that look like?

We would love for it to be a big thing.  We're always better at big things than we are at little things.  A good example of a big thing is this Stop Kony campaign spearheaded by Invisible Children.  If you haven't heard about it, go search it online.  It's everywhere!  It is a big thing.  I know that there are other big things out there that we could do.  But what if the redemption of the world was in the small details?  Things like only buying and drinking fair trade coffee.  Things like replacing all of our light bulbs with high-efficiency light bulbs.  Things like composting instead of throwing away.  Things like giving Living Water International gift cards for birthdays instead of cash.  Things like spending $35-$50 per month on a Compassion child.  Things like volunteering with your local food bank.

The problem with little things is that we rarely see the "fruit" of that.  The things that I mentioned don't help you to show up on the front page of the paper.  They don't cause people to blog about you.  They don't bring recognition to your family.  But they are small, tangible affirmations that we do, indeed, still believe that God is ruling over all.  That Jesus really meant that he was making all things new.  That creation is going somewhere.  That light wins.  Every time.  Every.  Time.