When We All Must Flee the Stick-Hitters. And UNITE Linky

“We are all only as great as the least of these among us.”

I first see her face; Mocha skin, pony-tails reaching, big cheeks, walking un-supervised around the construction site where we touch shoulders with her people.  Passing concrete along, for hours.

A few other children gather, but she draws me like a tsunami where I cannot escape it’s pulling.

Bricks finally rest. Long one climbs hands and feet up a coconut tree to offer us reprieve, though the food there is scarce.  A village abundant without Costco’s, Wallmarts, or Targets…

And I feel like the needy one.  Not them.

I ask the other children her name. One tells me, “Miley”.  While others call her “gorde”, “fat”.  Still others I hear chant, “Feo”, meaning “ugly”.

The Hollywood in me grieves the child-star with the same name.  And I hope this village gives this “Miley” more than the U.S. gave the one with the last name “Cyrus.  Where all blessings, and glamore, and money tried to save her from her own poverty.  But couldn’t.

Yes, sometimes we are more poor in our wealth, that the impoverished who sit content with nothing.

And the God of contentment pierces me deep.  I pick up the village Miley, being passed like a transient, from arm to arm, child to child, seeking any refuge from others pinching her…the long stick other children use to poke, prod, and smack her with….when she is not looking.

I want to protect her, but eventually we all realize, our arms can never be big enough to save the world.  Regardless of how we wish they were….

We meet. Ebony child and this white mom who back home gives her life as a foster parent, caring for hurting children.

Yet, man-arms and carnal attempts are never sufficient…and spirits alone must embrace their true weakness.  For eventually we all become reminded….us as mere flesh, can never replace the one, true redeeming Savior.

A stick strikes her again.  She cries out.  Another pinches. And again, she slaps away her predators.  I spin her around, trying to cry out against those hurting her.  Still oh how I have been this child without reprieve, without safety, without shelter.  This little one a victim to sin and a world and it’s cruelty…

With no where to go.  No arms to capture me…but Jesus’.

And there becomes a moment when we realize we all are not that different.  A moment we find in others the mirror of our own existence.  That second, God un-scales our eyes, un-veils us to see…sometimes there is no escapism, no denial or lie, or deception that can mask reality…..

We all in this life will inevitably hurt, sometimes.

And my walls fall like Jericho, with Miley snuggled tight.  My guards, status, and stature seems nothing when I cannot protect this hurting child.  When I recognize…all best attempts can’t reprieve myself, defend myself from those closest to me, and their intentional whippings.

Truth is….we are all just as weak, vulnerable, insufficient….if we don’t seek refuge….climbing in the arms of our Savior.

Yes, it is a bitter-sweet day when sin surfaces and we all recognize we are only human….every day, even more, in need of a kind, compassion, all seeing and all knowing Savior.

By grace, I wrestle that night in my bed alone.  I fight the demons of my past, the truth that sometimes even those most near can be drawn away cold by sin that ravishes the very core of us…time and time again….

And we need more than people, cultures, wealth, significance….or we will all end up barren, cold, and alone.  Still, by grace….that is when Jesus saves us most.  That moment, in humility, of our worst heartbreak and affliction, when tears are shed, in the bunk of our own self-affliction.

I find Miley again the next day.  No, she finds me.  Again and again.  Day after day, I cling to her, as she curls up to me for safety.

The pinching’s lessen, sticks finally start falling instead of striking…when this village sees this child whose mother left her is worthy of love like the rest of us.

Yes, oh how the climate changes, the world tilts toward goodness…when we love the least of these, when we reach for the things others are rejecting….when grace breathes hope in our hearts where there has only been anguish and suffering…

The days continue. And this child once scolded and picked on, now starts smiling, and laughing, and singing.  She brings me two roses and whispers, “Fleur”.  Her grandmother tells us she adores me.  As I am just as smitten with her.  Her brown eyes reach my soul, the place uniting the vulnerable within us both.

And maybe hope surfaces most when we come along side each other?  When we realize someone…anyone might find us and fight for us.  When we run to those shelters, God’s gives us as refuge in our hopelessness?

Final days. Both me and Mylie’s walls crumble.  The bricks of the community center we build grow, and develop, becoming a symbolism for what happens when community builds instead of destroys one another.

She rests.  Eyes closed. I rest against the wall holding her.  A teen next to us sings, “Holy, Holy, Holy” in Spanish.  I join her in English….

As peace.  And hope.  And goodness covers the pain found in both of us…worship tying skin color, and cultures, and language barriers.  Making us all one.

Two worlds reconciling.  Lives merging.  Miley and I content, there in the church where His safety is the only thing protecting us.  His grace like an ocean, flooding us….healing us in places we never saw where broken.

And oh what a gift when we can find quiet, and stillness, and content in a world filled with sticks, and pinches, poking and prodding the genuine gifts He has given us.

The quiet in the storm.  No greater reward. 

Yes, the world is broken.  I am broken.  Children like both Miley’s live all over the world hurting…in different ways.

Will we see them? Will we join them?  Will we rise up and encourage hope, by giving life and trusting God to deal with the stick pokers and their weapons?

For, doesn’t God call us to do more than live as bystanders watching?  Doesn’t
He call us to do more than build man-made inanimate objects…when sin sits around the corner, waiting to destroy all progress?

Doesn’t He calls us to go into the world, into the hearts of others?  Getting our so called clean-hands dirty?  Laying bricks of faith, faithfully? Seeing, lifting up the most lost and needy?  

And in that unity.  In that courageous facing of our own Spiritual condition…

He is our healing.  He is our refuge.  He is the one who still bares the scars from His persecutors.  The one who was pierced by those who justified their killing, diluted into thinking their crucifixion of Him was a purging of their culture.

And maybe as we all walk in our worlds…whatever they look like; scar-filled, small-lives running to His arms for refuge…It is then when us and Him become one, most closely.

And we too can find hope in the arms of our perfect Savior. His scars still transparent, revealing to us, He can identify with us in our weakness.  Not a foreigner at all, immune to rejection.

And it is there in the temple of this mutually shared experience….Healing is in the reaching.

For aren’t we are all only as great as the least here among us, needing?

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