An Inkling
God is never without the means to lend perspective.
I was sitting here pondering on our larger church, and thinking about how to follow up on my last post, when into my in box popped a prayer request from a missionary doctor friend who lives in a Muslim nation. He faithfully sends these prayers each week, requesting that we join him in prayer. Typically they arrive Tuesday morning, and each time they provide an opportunity for me to recalculate just how “huge” my worry du jour really is.
Here’s this week’s prayer request, with place identifiers removed:
God of mercy, who forgets not the poor and oppressed, we pray for Nupur, a 14-year-old tenth-grader who lives with her family of six in a one-room slum dwelling on the _____ side of _____. She dreams of attending college. Her father, an unemployed drug addict, beats her mother to demand the $2 a day she earns unloading sand from boats on the _____ River. Lord, with your mighty hand break the bonds of poverty and oppression that grip Nupur's family, ease the pain she has felt watching her mother be beaten, and help her realize her dream of higher education. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, who taught us that in faith all things are possible. Amen.
Hmmm. And I was worrying about what will become of our denomination as an institution… Thanks be to God for his regular reminders about what matters.
Which is not to say that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) doesn’t matter. For one thing, that’s the part of God’s larger church that supports my friend in his service. If the church unravels, lots of important missions will get rocked.
But the basic issues in contention, sexual ethics and the uniqueness of salvation in Jesus Christ, matter for another reason too: they impact the well-being and witness of Christians in such lands. Many Muslims never give the gospel a chance because they associate it with the sexual chaos of western societies, which they see as Christian lands. We would protest that our faith can’t be judged by our nation, but that is their perception. And they are very clear that if the Koran is right about the divine, then we are not. Historic and global Christianity would rightly want to add, “and vice versa.” So for the gospel even to get a hearing, and then for us to have some clarity in that conversation, these basic issues matter – a lot.
But here’s what matters most: these ongoing contentions not only threaten the institutional viability of our denomination, they threaten the possibility that we might have the privilege of bringing the best of all good news to Nupur. So I continue to pray for our sick ol’ mother church.
And I do so with gratitude to God for the perspective he provides on what is most important – Nupur, and millions like her.
Pray for Nupur,
Keith
