Joy & Pain

“Jesus knows no national boundaries or national preferences. The body of Christ is an international one, and the allegiance of Christians to the church must always supersede their national identities.”-Jim Wallis from God's Politics

Because we should hurt when they hurt. Because we should take care of theirs and ours. Because we are a we not a them and us. We are one body without a nationality. We are one body that was mobilized to look after the least of these.

When I was 14, I took my first trip to Mexico to visit an aunt. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. We were poor growing up, but until I crossed the border, I had no perspective to my own poverty. I had four walls, and shoes, and clean clothes. I was rich. I sat in the back seat and cried all the way through Tijuana. I didn't understand.

Later, on the beach, I met a small local child. His skin was darkened by the sun, and he ran from here to there squealing and laughing as if his life depended on it. Have you ever wondered why you can't help but laugh when a child is laughing? The joy is so pure it can break through the deepest sorrow. The boy looked at me, and I laughed too. My mom said to me, “isn't it interesting how joy is the same in every language.”

Joy is the same in every language.

Human beings are so deeply connected, that across borders, cultures, customs, & languages, happiness and joy are the same. Joy is powerful. It is a shared human experience. That is incredible. Imagine what we could do if we harnessed the power of joy. If we tapped into the energy created by children laughing around the world. That, is alternative fuel.

Joy is the same in every language.

So is pain.

Pain is the same in every language.

Human beings are so deeply connected that when a mother loses her child to war half way across the world, we can recognize that pain. Her eyes are the same and are worn across the world by any mother who loses a child. An empty stomach in Africa feels the same as an empty stomach on the streets in America. A woman who is raped in South East Asia, feels the same violated vulnerability as any other.

Pain is the same in every language.

In the United States there is a group or a club for everything. There are anti-war protests, canned-food drives, and fundraising campaigns with pictures of children with distended stomachs and women who have been raped multiple times. There are plenty of opportunities to “like” a cause on facebook or to send an email about the latest human rights violation. There are facebook groups and awareness seminars about the latest issue.

But until that issue becomes pain, it won't translate.

There is real pain and suffering behind those statistics. The boy in that picture is still starving, or possibly dead. The women are still being raped. The women are still being sold for profit and thrown away like garbage. Until we recognize that they are us and that their pain is our pain, and until we mourn their children as well as ours, we won't understand.

Our hearts can't hear an issue.

“There is such a thing as redemptive suffering. It is when we suffer with someone, when we choose to enter in to their pain, when we bear their burdens with them.”-Shane Claiborne

Pain is the same in every language.

Let's take it back...

“Jesus knows no national boundaries or national preferences. The body of Christ is an international one, and the allegiance of Christians to the church [the body] must always supersede their national identities.”

So then what does your allegiance to the body of Christ require of you?

Pray about it.

Read about it.

Act on it.

When you pray, Move your feet.

...keep spreading the love around...