Leaning Forward

The past two weeks have been a great awakening for me. I’ve witnessed three of the most disturbing events. First, I was attending a resource fair at one of our state prisons. In between groups of inmates coming out, a trustee walked by my table and handed me a copy Straight Low Magazine (a LA prison magazine). What I saw on the cover caused my heart to fall to the floor.  There was a picture of a man with a tattoo of a pentagram on his forehead, another tattoo of a line dividing his face in half, and a third tattoo of the word suicidal on his throat.  I opened the magazine and began to read his story. At 3, his parents divorced, at age 7 he began smoking marijuana, at 11 he was addicted to heroin, and by the 8th grade he had dropped out of school. His mom later remarried a police officer who repeatedly physically beat him. His childhood was filled with various run-ins with the law, satanic worship, and numerous attempts at suicide. He hated himself, the world, and everyone in it.  I left that prison in disbelief.

Later in the week, I received word that a man that one of my co-workers and I had just ministered to earlier in the month died as a result of alcohol. He literally drank himself to death. I’ll never forget the conversation we had with him back in July. As he opened up to us, he began to share that he started drinking at the age of 5. In his culture of Bosnia, this was very common.  He then opened up his heart and shared with us that his own father had raped him as a child, and had “passed him around” to his other male friends. He’s pain was so severe that the only reprieve that he could get was through death.

This week one of our clients came in the office and informed us that he, his wife, and their children had not eaten in several days. We always keep canned food around the office for times like this, but as I was as I compiling a a box of  groceries,  I heard this voice inside my head tell me “you’ve never experienced what this is like … to be hungry and go without food.” How embarrassing and humbling that must be to have to tell someone that you have not eaten in several days, that there is no food in the pantry, and no financial means to get any.

  All the pain, hurt, and desperation that I saw in these stories just reminded me that I don’t have to go to Africa, or any other “far off” land to do missions. I can do missions right here where I’m at. There’s a mission trip waiting for me right next door, across the street, in the cubicle next to me, in the desk behind me, and very possibly under my own roof. Sometimes the only pain and heartache we see is our own, but the truth is the world is filled with pain, heartache, loneliness, and hopelessness. Jesus said, “The greatest among you must be the one who serves” Luke 22:26. One of the key values of the Kingdom of Heaven is servanthood. Opportunities to serve are all around us, if we’ll just be looking.