20 years ago this month, Gil and I were boarding our first flight to Tanzania.
As we went through security, my carry-on bag got pulled aside. I watched patiently as the agent unzipped my black roller bag, poked around, and pulled out a full-sized pair of Fiskars scissors.
I was mortified. “I’m so sorry,” I fumbled. “I was using those for cutting tape for boxes and I meant to take them out before we left for the airport. You can confiscate them.”
He shrugged, put the scissors back into my bag, and waved me through.
I was taken aback. I recall telling Gil, “Fiskars scissors are really sharp. I’m surprised they are allowing me to take them on the plane.”
I don’t remember anything else about that journey. But that memory stayed with me because it was just a few weeks later when 19 terrorists with knives about as big as my scissors forever changed air travel, America, and the world.
I wrote this for the missionary audience over at A Life Overseas, so you might appreciate how this story helps you empathize with missionary friends. And really, it applies to anyone in a new place.
I recently moved to a new country. New house, new city, new grocery store, new car, new neighborhood. Just about every single thing in my life was new.
Entering a grocery store almost brought about a panic attack. I started at the jars of mayonnaise, paralyzed by indecision. Which one tastes best? Which one is healthiest or cheapest? What if I make the wrong choice? And then repeat that by 25 as I walked down the aisles, my head spinning, my list clutched in my sweaty hand. I didn’t know where the olives were. I didn’t recognize much of what was on the shelves. I stressed over how much chicken was supposed to cost. Once I was ready to check-out, another wave of tension flooded me as I had to remind myself of the procedure for buying my groceries.
Then there was driving. My new country drives on the opposite side of the road as my previous country. That meant that every time I got to the car, I had to focus on which side of the car I needed to enter. If I happened to be absent-minded, I would get in, close the door, and attempt to put my key into the glove compartment. Once I did manage to successfully turn on the car, it took all my concentration to make sure I was driving on the correct side of the road. I repeatedly reminded myself of the traffic laws of my new country, knowing that my instincts would be to follow the rules of the former.
I pull out the weeds in my lawn and think about how absurd it is that I am pulling weeds while under the same sky, a young man tries to escape his country by hanging onto the wing of a plane.
I put Cheerios into my shopping cart, and jingling monotonously over the loudspeakers is Dance until the morning light/Forget about the worries on your mind/We can leave them all behind. Half a world away, a mother tries to thrust her baby to strangers and safety on the other side of barbed wire.
My daughter and her friend chatter in the backseat about a missed pass in volleyball and how Honors English is so much work. The same moment in time, a 15-year-old daughter of a pastor is pulled from her bed and forced into a marriage of terror, her father watching broken and helpless.
I read about the mountainous landfill in Ghana, filled with cast-off American clothing. Even the poor of Africa are overwhelmed by the influx of our discarded shirts and dresses. I contemplate the statement: “We’re buying 60 percent more clothes now than we did 15 years ago. But we’re keeping them for half as long.” Meanwhile, a few countries over, a doctor dashes around her city, foraging for any bit of cash she can coax from empty ATM machines.
My house now has two refrigerators in it. Two. Because heaven forbid I go to the grocery store (which is five minutes away) more than once a week. But I justified this because practically everyone in America has more than one fridge and I bought the cheaper one and I buy used clothes and I pull my own weeds instead of paying someone. There’s a whine in my voice and a defensiveness on my face because I don’t want to admit how spoiled I am, despite what meager sacrifices I am making.
Tents multiply like mushrooms after a spring rain.
The poor addicted broken tucked into dark corners under bridges stayed away from us.
And we forgot they were there.
But today their destitution creeps into our cul de sac cannot escape our vision.
Tens of thousands image-bearers fall asleep in filth captive to fear imprisoned in despondency.
Every night.
And we forget their tents until their proximity invades our denial.
Could their nearness be their Maker’s plea from His heart to His hands and His feet to run to touch to restore?
Sunday at 10am, the hands and feet gaze through stained-glass windows at vacant land resting idle.
Consider Jesus who left behind glory to sit in the dirt to touch the leper to be sleepless friendless possessionless homeless to feel our sorrow.
That we may transform desolate fields into villages of relief restoration redemption.
Nestled next to the house of God, those shooed off sidewalks shoved off benches snubbed from parks find home.
Four walls replace patched tents gardens reclaim garbage jobs redeem shame communities relieve contention.
The formerly hopeless flourishing next door to the place where they found eternal hope.
Because God so loved the world . . .
That His churches would choose to race to the rescue to fight for the chance to be hands of mercy feet of love to be first in line to welcome the least of these.
*Inspired by Goodness Village, Compassion Village, and other churches building mini-villages for the homeless and vulnerable on their property. Thank you to Luke Grover for telling me about this innovative idea.
*Also, thank you to Alyssa Dunker. This topic materialized in my head in verse form, but when I started writing it, I realized I’m really not a good poet. Alyssa pushed and prodded it out of me and did a lot of editing. If you like it, she gets the credit too.
Last week I told my cousin about our year in Tanzania infamously called the War of the Ticks. It was so nightmarish that every day I pulled 25 of them off my tiny dog and I stopped even trying with our big dog and they had infested my kitchen and we rarely let the dogs in the house anymore but the ticks kept crawling in under the door anyway.
We paid the children money for the number of ticks they killed and so there were always cups of water sitting around with dead ticks drowned in them by my children. Drowning did not always work though, because ticks would go through the washing machine cycle and come out alive. I became an expert at beheading them with a fingernail. Sometimes the engorged ones would fall off the dogs and burst open which meant the live ticks would crawl through the dog blood and leave their tiny tracks on the floor.
When I found ticks in my daughter’s bed, we contemplated putting the dogs down. We had tried every tick prevention we could find, and until a friend of a friend sent us magical tick pills which killed them all in 24 hours, that year felt like some sort of creepy tick hell.
