Smell the Onion

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet
but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ
is to look out on a hurting world Yours are the feet with which he is
to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless
now.  –Saint Teresa of Avila

My whole life I have been haunted by the story of the rich young ruler. I have heard, over and over that the point of the story isn’t that we all should give all we have to the poor, but that we
should be willing to call us to do whatever it is Jesus calls us to do. I can buy that…and still…

I have seen real need in my life. It took leaving this country and being set down in the middle of muddy Tanzania (well, first Croatia…I got a taste there…) for my eyes to be opened to the reality that I have neighbors going without food. I have held children that do not know the love of a family of their
own. I have seen bodies destroyed by things that I could afford to prevent or treat in my own family.

My heart breaks as I remember sister Laura wrestling Justin out of my arms as I left the orphanage…his cries of “Mama” still ring in my ears. I warm myself in the memory of watching Sister Lucy bathe baby Moses in a dishpan…singing softly, scooping water up and over, up and over…It has been five years since I left the mountain and I can still feel the children’s bare feet on my shins, their cheeks buried in my
neck…hear the clamor of breakfast and the shouts and whimpers and laughs. I was not yet a mother then, but I felt as deeply as I could for them. Now that I have borne my own children sometimes I am suffocated by the memory of those.

I treasure the grin of the fingerless man who ate the second half of my huge oatmeal raisin cookie. I remember my embarrassment at the ridiculous gratitude of Pastor Albert, when we gave him our leftover food money for the children.  I remember the overwhelming guilt of returning to this side of the ocean, and walking barefoot on plush carpet and paying six dollars for a glass of orange juice.

The truth is that the fact that my babies are in Africa makes it easier to continue getting and spending with little felt connection. The truth is that I’m sure that there are children going to bed hungry not ten miles from my house. There are children who know only the fear of family. Children who need medical treatment they are not getting.

And the question really is, what in heavens name am I going to do about it? Too often, I think, I get caught up in the knowledge that my money could be helping these children—these families. But is my money the way that God’s work is going to get done in the world? Does the creator of the universe need funding?

I do feel that being a good steward of my financial resources is a cruicial part of my walk with Christ, as he calls us to care for the poor and orphaned.  I need to balance that with the knowledge that, fed or not, all are in desperate need of Christ.  I cannot go to bed satisfied that I have done my job, just because I have sent some money to Kilimanjaro, or donated some school supplies to an inner city school.  I believe we are called to do those things.  But those things are meaningless, in the end, without Christ.  God help me to not
get so caught up in my self righteous enthusiasm of helping those who are needy that I think that it is by my own material efforts that anyone will be “saved.”