Lee University chose the Hogar Agape orphanage in Nicaragua as their Missions Week project. In December 2007, several students had the opportunity to visit Nicaragua. The following is one student’s account of the trip:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but must take it because it is right.”
This question of doing what is right struck me significantly on the bus as we drove into living and working spaces of the 4,000 people in the Managua dump. It seemed to me that I was making a tourist attraction out of human hardship, gleaning a lesson from their impoverished position. This is easy to do at times on cross-cultural trips because people are living in a way that is so different from what you are used to. However this experience did not sit right with me because not only was I representing my country by the American flag on the bus, but even more significantly I was representing Christ with the Church of God sign.
If I am truly supposed to display Christ’s selflessness and care for others, being the “only Jesus they may ever meet,” I did Him and His Kingdom a major disservice that day. I watched a man look me in the eye and put his hand to his mouth asking for food, and just looked down at him through the glass, unable to do anything. Instantly the words from Matthew 25:40 came rushing into my memory, “What you do to the least of these you do unto me.” Although this verse is always powerful, never have I heard it with such intensity. I looked Jesus in the eye when He asked for food, and drove away. I felt pain and anger about my failure individually and as a part of the American church; we can have so much and yet overlook so much pain and suffering in this world.
We have the opportunity to change our world, change things in the church that we don’t see mirroring the way Jesus lived his life, and the opportunity to love our neighbor whether that neighbor be across the railroad tracks in Cleveland, in your dorm, or in another country. When I talk with other students, or read student papers as a peer leader I am so encouraged by the passion students have for others and their will to make this world a better place for people here or in their home countries. I have so much hope in what our generation of Christians can do for the Kingdom.
When you see poverty or injustice, it’s often easy to question where God is in those situations. Gary Haughen, the founder of International Justice Mission, has seen his fair share of these atrocious situations and comes out with this perspective:
“Given all the power and resources that God has placed in the hands of humankind I have yet to see any injustice of humankind that could not also be stopped by humankind. I find myself sympathizing with a God who speaking through the ancient prophet told his people ‘You have wearied the Lord with your words…by saying…where is the God of justice? (Malachi 2:17 NIV)’ Increasingly I feel quite sure of the whereabouts of God. My tradition tells of a father in heaven who refused to love an unjust world from a safe distance, but took his dwelling among us to endure the humility of false arrests, vicious torture, and execution. This is the God who could be found as a ‘man of sorrows and familiar with suffering (Isaiah 53:3 NIV)’ The more I have come to know him the harder it has become for me to ask such a God to explain where he has been. In fact, surprisingly, I don’t generally hear the victims of abuse doubting the presence of God either. Much more often I hear them asking me, ‘Where have you been?'”
Tarah Armbrester, Lee University Student
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