you are kind of like a black man.

Today I met a man who lives on the street and works with his
hands all day. He said, “You are kind of
like a black man.” All of his friends
clapped their hands and nodded their heads and my initial thought was, “Damn, I’m
a good missionary.”

This is not a common thought, so celebrate that crass, silly
moment with me.

Those are beautiful moments: when conversation is void enough of language
barriers and distinctions between class and color for that bit of light to get
through, when that chance comes to feel and chase after a real connection with
the people here. Me in my sweet new
tennis shoes with my iPod cord hanging out of my pocket having a moment with a
man who lives on the street where we both think, “You are not so different from
me,” – beautiful as it sounds and as true as I want it to be, it isn’t a
thought that makes much sense, so God must be in the middle of moments like
those, and His breath and His image must be what we have in common.

I spend my afternoons Monday through Friday at the Joshua
Project (JP). In the morning JP serves
as a school and in the afternoons we walk around the township gathering kids before
we spend a few hours with them doing art, drama, woodworking, or just spending
time on beaches or playgrounds with them.

There are plenty of stories to tell, and probably a few
chapters of a Psychology book that I could write you all, just from the last
two weeks of spending time with these kids.
But I’ll throw you a few sunbeams before I go off blogging about child
psychology.

There is an old German upright piano in the back of the
room, so old that it has adjustable candle holders on it – in case you decide
to play piano in the dark… 130 years ago.
The kids are drawn to it. Their
left hand always starts thumping out a hip hop beat they’ve heard and the right
hand takes its cue and comes in, slamming down whatever keys it can find. The piano is miserably out of tune and most
of the kids don’t have a clue what they’re doing, but at least once or twice a
day I hear something come out of that piano that blows my mind: a chord that I could never have thought of or
a few chords that work themselves out in a lovely way before it all dissolves
back into chaos. It’s beautiful and
strange and I love just sitting by and watching them play for the half hour
before the program starts.

There’s a boy named Keegan who, lately, is my best friend in
the whole wide world. He’s
incredible. He’s 11-years old. We made a trip to the beach a few weeks back
and we have been learning a lot about each other ever since. We chase each other and play tag and argue
about who is Tom and who is Jerry (neither of us wants to be the cat). Sometimes Keegan rides my back and sings
songs while we walk home. He wants to be
a dancing pop singer like Michael Jackson, and he seems to be well on his way –
the kid makes my dancing look like random strands of survival techniques that
will probably fail.

Keegan is a gift to me for all kinds of reasons, but mainly
this one: Keegan gives me hope for my
relationships with all of these kids.
Keegan has a big heart and an incredible smile and we have conversations
that go beyond games and silliness. When Keegan does something wrong we can
have conversations about what he did wrong and why it wasn’t a good idea. With the other kids it’s almost a challenge
not to get into fist fights with them – which says a lot, because I’m not
exaggerating, and I’m Matt Spainhour – I hardly know how to make a fist.

I’m learning a lot from these kids. They’re pushing me to places where I just don’t
have much love or patience left. They’re
pushing me to the place where I wonder how much what we’re doing actually matters
in the long run (please do not take that as an invitation for cliche encouragement,
please). They’re pushing me to the place
where I realize how American I am. I want
results. I want tangible results. And I want them now. Somedays I even want cotton cloud lessons
from God about how what I’m doing is changing the lives, and that silly tingle
of throwing one starfish back at a time and one pair of footprints on the beach.

But God giggles at my Americana (or maybe he
shudders). He tells me to shut up and
stop squirming so he can burn those things out of my brain, so that I can see
what he’s up to and suffer for the sake of a gradual coming of a Kingdom that
He is bringing in full. Words like
efficient and effective tend to fall apart in the Kingdom, at least by our
standards. So we stick to our guns: bathing things in prayer, begging for the
Spirit to open our eyes and ears, loving recklessly when it doesn’t make sense,
forgiving when we could reason a right not to, turning our cheek until we can’t
feel our face anymore.

I’m done
believing Jesus meant anything other than what he said in those things. He didn’t leave us a way out. He said “follow me” and the next thing we
know Jesus is a bloody mess with someone else’s spit running down his face and
vinegar burning the back of his throat, covered in the sin of the world,
suffering and absorbing the terror of what we’ve made the world into.

So here we are, at the cross, and He’s asking us to take
up our own – to bleed and be spat on, to absorb “the brunt and brutality of a
yet unredeemed world.” It might not be
what we signed up for, but it’s what we were made for and what we were called
to, it’s the way of Christ. It’s the
kind of stuff that makes you lose sleep at night, but it’s the kind of stuff
that makes you come alive again. It’s
Jesus.

cheers