The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:7)
March 27th, 2011. Sunny.
Sunday service in New City Fellowship was a great experience. I surely miss partaking communion on Sundays!
The unique thing about the Church is really the diversity. There are so many intercultural/racial marriages and lots, LOTS of adoption. It's almost hard to tell who's who's parents by simply looking at the children.
After service, all the City Light participants were given a "host family" to hangout for lunch and to spend some time in the early afternoon.
Grace and I had the privilege to meet Katherine and her family.
Our hostess Katherine was a lovely and warm Congolese lady who runs a family of eight on a low-paid job and lots of grace from the Lord.
As someone who came to this country to seek asylum, she makes the most of what life brings to her and truly understands "The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." (Psalm 18:2)
I must be honest, meeting her family wasn't an easy experience for me.
Not only because having to remember new faces with names, quite numerous of them, but also because of him...
His name was Elijah, an adorable 2-month-old baby, who I kept calling him "Isaiah" (hey, but they were both famous prophets!! I had to keep humming "Days of Elijah" in order for me to remember...).
What's wrong with him?
Nothing.
What's wrong with me?
Legalism.
As we walked into the family room, Katherine introduced her daughter to us, as well as the little baby boy she was holding.
"That's my daughter", she said, "and that's my grandson."
I could sense the uncertainty in her voice, uncertainty from not knowing exactly how that would be received by us.
"Aww... how cute!" was our very initial response.
Katherine looked at us, and then said "yeah, she's going back to school soon", referring to her daughter, "it was an accident, but accident happens, and we just love him so much, with the grace from God, you know?" this time her grandson.
Do I know? Do I?
Strongly was I shaken.
"Was it that he was a child born outside of a marriage that made me feel uneasy?" I asked myself.
"No, it can't be, you see this all the time!" I answered myself.
"Hum, but those are people who have relationships with you, or simply people you have no real connections with" I confronted myself.
"You pity him! 'poor little boy, why was he brought to the world in such manner?' is what went through your mind!" I spoke truth to myself, and the truth almost overwhelmed me at the moment.
Stretched.
"We can sit down" Grace's voice pulled me back to the family room. I couldn't remember meeting the rest of the family, or, picking the most cornered seat in that room on the edge of the couch.
"And you couldn't handle Katherine's openness on this, either, that bothers you even more!" I continued to wrestle with myself.
"Alright, YES! how could she be so open about this!?" I admitted to myself, feeling so stretched that it was starting to hurt.
Interestingly, knowing that the birth outside of a marriage wasn't the only thing that bothered me actually made me feel better.
"I am not completely being legalistic, it's just that the ground Katherine takes was strange to me." I concluded.
Leaving all my tangled thoughts and my disengagement, I decided to do what I normally would do... I walked to the baby, who, by that time had been handed to Katherine's nephew who's come to join us for lunch, and asked "may I hold him?"
The not-really-knowing-what-to-do-with-the-baby man gladly said "YES!"
All the things I was wrestling with and whatever wall there was built in my heart melted and vanished as soon as I held the lovely life in my arms and gazed into his charming eyes.
Elijah, "Yahweh is my God".
Amen, He is indeed.
"Let's go upstairs and see if we can help with anything" I said to Grace.
The emotions in Katherine's eyes when she saw us there and the baby in my arms were mixed.
Little Elijah started to frown, make faces, make noises, wiggle in my arms.
Having to had the experience of serving in the nursery room at Church before, I quickly ascertained that he was getting things out of his system, physically.
How?
I held him up and smelled.
And that did it.
Katherine had a big big smile on her face and the mixed emotions she had in her eyes were gone.
"Life and all there is to it" very pertinently described the theme of our conversation at the table.
Oh, did I mention that the conversation was partly in French?
Yeah, apparently I obtained more French in me than I thought...
Katherine and her nephews opened our eyes to Congo, and how it is like to be leaving your home country for the purpose of seeking refuge.
Not like taking a trip, that's for sure.
The culture in Congo is obviously, not surprisingly different than what we are used to. Laying down the developed westernized country perspective (and prejudice?) and learn to appreciate how things work in other parts of the world was another take-home message of the day.
Many things, very great things, were shared on that table.
A question (for me from Katherine) such as "when do you plan on getting married, young lady? when you are 42?" reflects the openness we've eventually come to share.
(When she found out that I am 25 and not planning a family yet, she almost jumped! With my immediate explanation of "but I can't really plan to have a family by myself", she smiled and said, "then you need to get to work, lady, and God will provide!")
We chatted more after the guys left.
Katherine opened up to us and spoke of her heart-brokeness and thoughts she has.
"I want my girls to be just like you when they grow up", she said, fixing her eyes on the far end of the room, "nice, go to school, get education, be smart, talk good, know the world, then a good life".
I looked at her, amazed that THAT's what she sees when she sees us. HOPE. Yet I take most of them for granted.
The hope she sees in us was the source of the mixed emotions she had when she saw Elijah in my arms, the same emotions she had when she introduced her 16-year-old daughter to us.
The cruelty of the reality of life stepped in for a moment and created a level, but the love of Christ leveled it off, mended it while I was still in the midst of my wrestling.
"They will" I said to her.
"Yeah" she replied almost with a light sigh, and continued "then they will find good husbands, the husbands will also have education".
"Like you, you have good education, you will not find someone who only went to high school, you will find a PhD, who can talk to you and think like you. I want them to find people who go to university" she further elaborated point, "then they will have better cars then the car I drive."
I paraphrased quite a bit of things she said in this blog entry, simply because I couldn't remember all of them word for word, but this one was one of them that stuck to my head, word for word.
Mistakes and brokeness were not overlooked in this family, they are acknowledged, but they are also embraced with so much faith, love, and grace.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”" (John 8:1-11)
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