Oh. My. God.
Amazing service! I have to put it up there with the conclusion of Game Change when they had the video showing we had enough money to go forward on all the initiatives.
From the very beginning they showed a clip that opened with "Collisions can be negative, painful, even fatal. They can also be positive, beautiful, rejuvinating. It all depends on WHAT YOU COLLIDE INTO." I had to whip out my journal right there and start writing.
Then Andrea and co. sang an awesome-juice song about a beautiful collision that I MUST own.
Then Chuck brought up Pastor Mosa from Soweto South Africa (who may be our new partner *squee!!*) and he gave a fantastical message involving The Message's translation of Matthew "I'll tell you why you are here: to be the salt-seasoning that brings out the God flavor of the earth" (pretty sure that's The Message's South African translation, bc it's far too amazeballs to be American) and a focus on the fact that the Good Samaritan went to where the man was.
****SIDE NOTE**** The Good Samaritan story. Heard it at least 100 times in my life by now. Realized/remembered/coalesced a few things today.
1. It would not have been safe to approach someone on the road who appeared to be beaten. No doubt there were plenty of criminals who played oppossum. Most likely the priest and Levite who pass by "on the other side of the road" did not do so out of spite but out of what they perceived to be an intelligent move toward self-preservation. I doubt that had they known the man was really dying and nobody was waiting to jump them, that they would have left him there.
2. The Samaritans, being the outcasts, would be street-smart. They would not have been ignorant about oppossum-criminals. But they would also have been subjected to enough atrocities in their daily lives to know the difference between fake-dying and real-dying.
Regardless, we have to be willing to take risks and allow God to protect us AND we have to live with the hurting so we know a need when we see one instead of assuming everyone is trying to "work the system."
Back to Crossroads...
THEN Chuck brings Rob Seddon (who coordinates all the South Africa stuff) onstage with Mosa to explain where we are going with the possible partnership etc. etc. etc. and Rob is just gushing about how wonderful the process has been of looking for the right partnership because it has allowed him to see all the crazy-wonderful ways God is working in South Africa yada yada all good stuff, when he says this:
"It has allowed us to begin to dream again."
And I fall completely apart.
Why?
Well let's go back to January when they announced that our Mamelodi partnership ended. I was crushed. This was my dream, my plan. I wanted to move there and live with the people and help run the medical initiative and make a difference. When they revealed the news (which I had already gotten by email and been stewing about for days) in service one week, I scrawled in large, darkly traced letters "Death of a Dream" complete with thorny vines choking the life out of the phrase.
And that was the first thing I thought about when he uttered that phrase. One of my biggest assets and biggest faults is my Hero Complex. "I must save the world!..." It drives me to devote time and energy to things that people find crazy and inspiring but I just find fun and worthwhile. "...because I am the only one who cares about saving the world!" It also buries me in unfounded isolation that leaves me depressed and burdened.
So when we get these services where they tell me that we've raised millions of dollars (newsflash: I did not donate millions of dollars myself, thus there must be someone else out there who also cares about this!) or that we can dream AGAIN (what??? other people had also had their dreams smashed to pieces? I thought I was the only one!) my normal response is to break down in tears of relief (and also tears of I-am-so-ridiculous-to-have-thought-I-was-alone).
But wait, it wasn't over!
THEN they unveiled a video of the CityLink groundbreaking ceremony that I was too exhausted to attend on Wednesday. A video of city leaders who seemed genuinely excited about this. A video reiterating that the goal is to help make people self-sufficient. A video where Brian reminded us that except for when Jesus laid hands on people, every great miracle took a loooooooong time to actually come to fruition. (The first thing you might think of to refute this is Moses raising his arms and parting the seas [I did] but I think the Israelites would argue that 400 years in captivity is a long time to wait for rescue.) A video that again had me trying to disguise from the people sitting around me, the fact that I was wiping snot and tears off my face sans tissues. (Ah! Lesson 7501, there you are!)
So yeah. Frickin' crazy fantasti-mazing service (I ran out of my usual descriptors, I used them all already!) Can't wait for the next few weeks of the Collide series, and also for the Advance messages at Sarah's school's camp (where I will be the official nurse!) next week.
The theme is "Risky."
I think that's good timing.
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