This January I journeyed to a grand city called Chicago. You've probably heard of it. I was on a mission trip with 21 other students and five adults. We went on a prayer tour on our first night in the city. It opened my eyes to a side of Chicago I'd never seen. I'd been to Chicago before, but I'd never seen the frail parts. The parts that are close to crumbling. The parts that are just barely held together by the weak bonds of the community. In that part of Chicago every eye is filled with either absolute hopelessness or overwhelming thanks.
While in that part of Chicago I discovered poverty is not continued by lack of wealth, but by lack of love, and by a lack of reasons to want to move on. A necessity of life--respect-- is denied to the inhabitants of this quartier. People are aware of this side of Chicago, yet they walk past and turn a blind eye, further robbing those enslaved in poverty from their dignity. Are we afraid to peer into the eyes of another out of fear the pain we see in their eyes will fill us with either an apathy or empathy that is too much to bear? The Gospel we preach has stopped there-- at preaching. We've forgotten the Gospel is not merely about saving ourselves. We've forgotten Jesus isn't around to support our frivolities.
We explore our abode for the week and play outside in the snow. And as we conclude our day with a meal of Puerto Rican deliciousness, I can't help but be reminded of our immense blessings and fortune.
Day Two:
We find a need and we work on meeting it, because if you look hard enough, you will always find a need to be filled. We bag food, the donations of a generous food company, then hand out the food, and a smile, to those who need them. It's interesting... I see children who even in the darkness of poverty are still... Children! They practically glow as they smile, laugh, and play with whatever they can find.
Next we are given five dollars and told to build a relationship by using the five dollars to meet someone's need. God did some amazing things in that activity. My group stopped to pray before we headed out on our mission, but we didn't even have to move to find someone willing to speak to us. His name is James, and he washes storefront windows to make ends meet. He tells us, "Business is tough. A person could starve out here." He pulled more relevant Scripture out of his mind than I ever could have, and you could tell he was trying to live by it. Meeting James convicted me. I have so many amazing opportunities, yet I fail to use them to their greatest advantage. After talking for a while, we offer James the five dollars. But he refuses. He's fasting and focusing on God right now, so he doesn't need a meal. We didn't get rid of our five 'meet-a-need' dollars, but I think we met one of James' needs that wasn't financial--a good conversation.
Cornerstone Community Outreach is our next stop, where we prepare food and fill a lot of hungry stomachs. As I help serve food, the hopelessness of some recipients makes me want to give them a big hug, while the enthusiastic gratefulness of others has the same effect. After serving food, we dance around the kitchen, singing and washing dishes, while creating our own close-knit community of five people who normally wouldn't have 'hung out'.
During our experiences of day two, I discovered in order to properly serve, testify, and love someone, you must know their language and culture. You can't just walk into a place and start preaching; you have to learn the context in which you are preaching, first. God is working everywhere, and it is a missionary's job to find where he is working and build upon it. Instead of waiting for God to show up, a missionary realizes God is already there. I also learned I must not only be thankful for resources, but I must use them to their fullest potential, squeezing every useful morsel out of what God has given me.
The day finishes with an amazing meal of Thai food, and some great laughs over some not so great jokes.
Day Three:
Starting at The Canaan, we again help hand out bagged food to those with empty stomachs. However, my job was not to help hand out food, my job was to help file paperwork on everyone who comes to The Canaan to receive food. They fill out a sort of registration form the first time they come, and every time they come after that it's written down on their sheet. It's not hard work, all I do is alphabetize hundreds of papers. But after we're finished and The Canaan is closed for the day, I'm pulled aside by a fellow servant, a regular when it comes to serving at The Canaan. She thanks me for doing all the paperwork, and explains how it always frustrates her too much for her to ever finish it. It was an interesting reminder of everyone's different talents. I didn't mind filing papers. I actually enjoy doing things like that. However, the other servant did not enjoy it, and I was able to use my God-given abilities and interests to do something that turned out to be a huge blessing to someone else.
Our next stop on Day Three is a soup kitchen called Two Little Fish. Except it isn't a soup kitchen, says the man in charge of the whole shebang. It's a place where people can come and be served something to eat. It isn't a soup kitchen. I was feeling carsick from the drive there, so I don't remember much from our visit to Two Little Fish, except for concentrating on not throwing up. And by the grace of God, we weren't needed to serve lunch that day, so I, personally, would not have to serve with only half of myself (since my other half would be trying to suppress sickness). The other group serving that day was a group of Buddhists. They served so beautifully and willingly. It was amazing. They were serving for different reasons than we were, but they served with such amazing hearts, and they don't even know Jesus' love like we do.
Observing the Buddhist group as they served with their whole heart taught me something, even though I was feeling sick. I was reminded of the story of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan was a foreigner in the land, yet he still helped the Jew. This world we live in is God's world. This is His domain, and we are the servants in His land. The Buddhists are foreigners in a land that does not belong to their god, yet they have compassion on those who are shunned and passed by those who claim to follow the one True God. If a group of people who don't know their Savior can serve that completely and wholly, then what's stopping me from having an even greater servant heart since I have the light of Christ inside me? I will strive to be a Christian who does what the bible says because I believe what the bible says.
Our last serving location of the day is another haven for hungry bellies called A Just Harvest. Oh my did that food look good. We make friends with other servants, bonding through our mutual interest of serving God by serving His children. What a great experience it was to make conversation with the guests.
Like a well placed sprig of mint, we garnish our day with some lovely pitas and hummus at a Mediterranean restaurant.
Day Four:
We sit down in Lawndale Community Church and wait for the service. I look at my bulletin and learn the message of the week is called "If we don't, who will?" Hmm... Since I don't believe in coincidences, God must be saying something. The title of this sermon sounds similar to what our youth pastor, Nick Cunningham, tells us often: This is your youth ministry and your mission. If you don't work for it, who will?
I learned a lot that Sunday. A lady called Momma Brenda got up on the stage and shared a poem with us. She spoke fast and with vigor, making it hard to decipher. But I think we got the point. The last line of the poem rang loudly before it was showered with applause of agreement. "Somebody better say something. Somebody better do something. Before it's too late." Momma Brenda got fired up. The good kind of fired up. She wants things to change. And God will use her to change things, because of her willingness to comply with His will.
After Momma Brenda shared her poem, one of the pastors of the church got up to speak. The message was so relevant, I knew God was telling me something. Almost every word of the pastor's message agreed with what I had learned that week. He told us we have to stop waiting for someone else to do the work God has called us, and us alone, to do. He said regular people are constantly ushered by the Holy Spirit to do extraordinary things. He urged us to stop hiding our gifts and privileges and use them. And most importantly, to me, he challenged us with the statement, "Either do something or stop complaining." I can't complain about how messed up this world because I'm contributing to the problem by complaining about it. I can't get all torn up over the evils of this world if I'm not going to do anything about it. It's one thing to have your heart break at the sight of what breaks God's heart, but it's another to trust the Lord enough to do something about it.
As we pile out of the vans at the Chicago-style pizzeria, we are all excited and a bit sad at the same time. This is our last meal in Chicago. After I finish a whopping one and a half pieces of pizza, I watch as Joe, a sophomore, and Nick, our youth pastor, each polish off five pieces each. Bleck. With full stomachs we pile back into the vans and hit the road.
It's a long seven hours, but we're home. Many hugs amongst our now close-knit family and then we head back to our own beds and showers.
My trip to Chicago changed my perspective and inspired me to use my resources better, apply what it means to be a true missionary, and also turn everything I have and do into a way to further the Kingdom of Heaven and serve the Lord.
