Giving Yourself Away

I graduate from college this week after six long years. Reaching my goal has reminded me of a sermon from a high school graduation service entitled Others. It raises the question "How do you give yourself away to God and others?" The pastor explained:

You are exposed the greatest land of opportunity on earth. You are living at the greatest time in human history. You have more advantage, more resources, more ability to achieve greater goals than anyone who has ever lived...yet you will fill the campuses and work place with more people who have more desire than ever before to miss the greatest blessings of all time...why?

They will never rise above themselves. Their world will be filled with mirrors rather than windows - seeing only themselves and measuring life moment by moment exclusively in terms of self reward or disadvantage of self.

I am calling you to the world of windows...to see others rather than yourself.

I sense in myself the Lord doing something brand new. It is a new beginning, a second chance. It is a gift from God. This time I would like to get it right. I think answering the question; How do I give myself away to God and others? is a step in the right direction. For some of us the ability to give is nurtured in us, modeled. For me I received a good dose from my parents, grandparents and my church. I received the good kind if giving, where the person's heart has no expectation of return. Some of us have suffered and are changed by it. Perhaps the meaning of our suffering is to open our eyes and teach us to give ourselves away.

While reading Philip Yancey's book Soul Survivor; How My Faith Survived the Church, I remember how I have been wounded by the church. I did not want to become bitter with life, nor bare false witness against the church. I have worked through it, or better put the Lord has worked it out in me. I highly suggest this book for those of you who find fault with God's people, his imperfect people. It is a modern day character study of people's lives that speak the gospel and incarnate the love and life of Christ so we as contemporary people can understand it.

Compassion

On a mission trip to Russia I visited a day center for the handicapped. The handicapped are complete outcasts in Russian society. Their plight is one of the hardest situations I have witnessed. Yancey addresses the unwanted in his book. He writes about Dr. Paul Brand a tireless genius who gave his life away to improve the condition of another unwanted people, lepers. Yancey observes "Brand began to see his chief contribution as one he had not studied in medical school; to join with a patient as a partner in the task of restoring dignity to a broken spirit. 'We are treating a person, not a disease,' He says. 'That is the true meaning of rehabilitation.'" (80)

We are hardened by our wealth and blind to the needs of the world, not just for the gospel but for plain old compassion. The answer ultimately is we need to find a heart group one that their very existence breaks our hearts and vow to do whatever we can to reach out and help. The question with which people so often scream and shake their fists at God: Why is there so much evil in the world? should be answered by believers with what they are doing to be the hands of Christ to defeat the effects of evil.

Yancey's thoughts;

I learned that part of the answer to my Question. "Where is God when it hurts?" is a related question: "Where is the church when it hurts?" As the Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel wrote, "The cardinal issue, Why does the God of justice and compassion permit evil to persist? is bound up with the problem of how man should aid God so that his justice and compassion prevail." From the gentle touch of health workers like Paul and Margaret Brand, leprosy patients in India have learned that caste is not fate and disease is not destiny, and in that same touch many first sense the tactile reality of God's own love. (73)

I sometimes think the greatest offense we inflect upon another is in breaking a person's spirit by rejection, abandonment and devaluation. It occurs when we highly esteem ourselves. In pride we open ourselves to all sorts of sin against others. Jesus lived in opposition to the proud; in everything he did he addressed the fruits of pride.

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' Matthew 25: 42- 45

In my new beginning I want to get it right this time. I have raised a family, I have just finished a college degree and I am beginning to inquire again of the Lord and ask how He wants me to serve.

Yancey's encourages us to look at others for that answer, not within ourselves. Where does my heart ache when I look at the circumstances God has placed me in, in this time of my life? How does He want me to get involved and what is a stake? Yancey shares more insights into the life of a man who both asked and answered that question:

In one of our last conversations, Dr. Brand turned reflective. "Because of where I practiced medicine, I never made much money at it. But I tell you that as I look back over a lifetime of surgery, the host of friends who once were patients bring me more joy than wealth could ever bring. I first met them when they were suffering and afraid. As their doctor, I shared their pain. Now that I am old, it is their love and gratitude that illuminates the continuing pathway of my life. It's strange-those of us who involve ourselves in places where there is the most suffering, look back in surprise to find that it was there that we discovered the reality of joy." He then quoted another saying of Jesus: "Happy are they who bear their share of the world's pain: In the long run they will know more happiness than those who avoid it" (qtd. in Yancy 85-86).

Dr. Brand's example helps me see that sometimes God asks us to serve in difficult places, maybe even places where we are not welcome or where there seems to be little earthly advantage for us. But it is there where we find our life's call. It makes me want to ask questions, hand in there, and let God work.

Work Cited

Yancey, Phillip. Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church. New York. Doubleday. 2001.