I recently realised there's a connection between a few different things I struggle with - phonecalls and beggars/sellers/performers in the street. It's that I'm here - or there - in my own little introverted space and suddenly someone's before me, expecting a response (or when I'm the one making the phonecall, I imagine myself doing this to someone else). And they're a person and as such it's automatically intense and complicated, even when it's so seemingly simple (buy an icecream, dammit! walk over and give them a muesli bar! answer the phone!). They're a person and I wasn't ready for it and now there's no time to prepare... and I seriously freak out inside of me. It's not like I'm thinking anything particularly negative, it's more of an emotional thing. It did get a little easier with the elderly man who begged by my old train station because I knew he might be there and got to know him a little, and it's a little easier if the phone tells me it's someone I know. But basically it's a struggle and I have to make myself pick up the phone because I know it's really socially important, and now I'm living in the city and there are lots of beggars I haven't worked out what to do but I know I have to figure something out.
Which made me think - some of this stuff in life is just a battle, that's just what it is. Like a natural pessimist having to remember to be thankful. But you need to do the best you can with the hand you've been dealt, and sometimes it's important to fight. The other person may not know what it cost you to have the courage to call and invite them over, but the relationship is more important than your comfort zone and God knows. So I never want to give up the fight, though of course it's also not a fight I want to wage alone - when this stuff comes up I always want to thrown myself at God's feet, begging for help, before I take that first terrifying step.
Monday, December 17, 2012
All creatures look to you
Sorry for the rather prolonged hiatus. I might just be back on track now but I'm not quite ready to promise. I've been flat out sorting out my new flat (!) and getting unreasonably stressed and everything, which meant I had no energy to write, or think. But here's something that came to my attention a while back...
I'm not exactly sure why - maybe because of the Catholic focus on praying to Mary/God for physical blessings, or because in very recent history Chile was a poor country and much of it still is, or because the eclipsing glories of the Gospel aren't well taught - but for whatever reason, people are much more inclined here to give thanks and pray for safety, food, health, those sort of things. It's what most people seem to pray for, most of the time.
It makes me worried about what Christians will do when the hard times come, as Jesus promised they would. I worry that this focus on the here-and-now will make them forget that God is bringing about bigger plans, yet more beautiful things, and they will find themselves unable to trust him when their personal troubles crowd in. I think this is something that my church back home does a good job of preparing its people for. And yet it's not all bad here. Chileans tend to have a fervent belief in God's ability to control life's details and a lovely dependence on him, and that's not nothing, not nothing at all.
I'm not exactly sure why - maybe because of the Catholic focus on praying to Mary/God for physical blessings, or because in very recent history Chile was a poor country and much of it still is, or because the eclipsing glories of the Gospel aren't well taught - but for whatever reason, people are much more inclined here to give thanks and pray for safety, food, health, those sort of things. It's what most people seem to pray for, most of the time.
It makes me worried about what Christians will do when the hard times come, as Jesus promised they would. I worry that this focus on the here-and-now will make them forget that God is bringing about bigger plans, yet more beautiful things, and they will find themselves unable to trust him when their personal troubles crowd in. I think this is something that my church back home does a good job of preparing its people for. And yet it's not all bad here. Chileans tend to have a fervent belief in God's ability to control life's details and a lovely dependence on him, and that's not nothing, not nothing at all.
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