10.31.2009

To Be

On one of the first days of English class, I taught my Level 1 students how to conjugate the verb "to be." I emphatically stressed that this was the most important word in the English language. You really can't say much without understanding this word. Imagine any conversation in English. Simple or complicated, this verb is essential. Hi, my name is Claire. I am from America. How are you?

Four weeks after the start of English classes, I'm starting to understand the importance of this "being" idea. I'm learning what it means to exist and the value in simply bearing God's likeness as I do so. The verb "do" has never given me any trouble. I get that. I've always been an exceptional "do-er." I happily worked all day most Saturdays during high school, and scheduled my days at college from morning until long past the sun had set. I can write Bible studies, lead meetings, and plan programs, no problem. I like doing. Being busy with a long to-do list in hand gives me an adrenaline rush. But when it comes time to stop doing and start being, I feel lost. I feel aimless. It makes me uncomfortable.

Not so for many other cultures on this earth. Europeans sit for hours at cafes. Perhaps they are involved in a fascinating conversation with a friend, or maybe they are watching people pass on the street. The content of this time usually isn't the point. Arab culture certainly understands the idea of being as well. It seems difficult to meet someone for coffee or tea for less than a couple hours. Church members arrive starting an hour before the service on Sunday, and stay at least an hour after. When things need to get done, they are accomplished, but only the essentials: cooking, eating, cleaning, constructing. The American mentality of back-to-back scheduled events doesn't apply here.

This week God let me have a small revelation into what He wants from me here. I think He wants to break me, and eight weeks in, I'm finally yielding to that breaking process.

God is breaking me of my preference for doing, and teaching me the more foundational idea of being. I'm learning to be with Him, really be with Him, as I sit and talk to Him in the mornings, imagining Him sitting beside me. I'm learning to be with Him as I seek His strength instead of finding satisfaction in the tangible results of my labor. I'm learning to be with the youth rather than merely accomplishing tasks and objective goals with them. Instead of just scheduling visits with women from the church into my daily calendar, I'm learning to be present with them as we drink coffee and pray together.

I have this mental image of God as a lumberjack, chopping away at my workaholic mindset. I'm not sure what the ideal balance is between doing and being as we walk through life, but God has set me down on a painstaking path of discovery to find out.

10.21.2009

A New Normal



Seven weeks. I'm almost seven weeks into this little adventure called Brussels. How much has changed in those seven weeks! No longer am I quite so wide eyed as I walk down the street and see women dressed like this:

or cars like this: (or the former driving the latter for that matter).

I don't think twice now about the cars loudly honking outside my room or the thumping and scraping of chairs and tables moving in the neighbor's apartment. The sounds of Arabic don't strike me as strange as they did at first. I've even started to forget that I am the white American in the Arab Church.


The smell of the popular Lebanese 7 spices wafting from a dish are still tantalizing, but no longer alert my appetite as they did at first.



The tastes of certain Middle Eastern dishes and delicacies have become easily recognizable now as I walk into more and more homes.





















And so goes life, doesn't it? New becomes old.

New tastes become commonplace. New sights stop turning your head. New sounds become unnoticeable. New smells become unrecognizable. New relationships become comfortable and familiar. New ideas become givens. New ways of doing things become habits.

As much as they may try to resist, things new will become things old.

What do we do when the new becomes normal?

Some people actively search for more new, while others quietly wait for the small buds of change. Some grow complacent with life as they know it, while others manage to simultaneously remember and move forward.

My answer to this question is not a deep or inspiring one. With losing the newness of living here, I've also lost the desperate dependency on God I wrote about before. Multitudes of things still bombard me that I don't completely understand, but even that occurrence, in itself, seems normal. My little bit of knowledge of the neighborhood's layout, Arab culture, English classes, and the dynamics of the church have given me a false sense of control, as if a little more understanding could somehow replace God's sovereignty.

It's been a while since I've gone to sleep in awe of His power. And I can't seem to reconjure that notion of Him being the one familiar thing. I want those things back. Certainly these understandings endure beyond the times we find ourselves like a fish out of water, frantically flopping around in our foreign environment.

--

It was a beautiful, crisp fall day here, which begged for a run in a nearby park. In the middle of my run, the old hymn, God Our Help in Ages Past, began playing on my ipod. With the help of this song, my brain stopped it's scattered thinking and reframed this transition I'm experiencing away from newness.

God is not new. Yes, He does new things, He leads us into new life, His compassions are new every morning, but He is not new. And whether I feel it or not, I am still a child in need of my Father.

I began this blog in August thrilled about the new thing that God was doing by sending me to Brussels. Seven weeks in, I'm reminded of more than the new place I was sent, but of the God I came seeking, the God who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

--

O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home.

Under the shadow of thy throne,
thy saints have dwelt secure;
sufficient is thine arm alone,
and our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
or earth received her frame,
from everlasting, thou art God,
to endless years the same.

A thousand ages, in thy sight,
are like an evening gone;
short as the watch that ends the night,
before the rising sun.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
bears all who breathe away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream
dies at the opening day.

O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come;
be thou our guide while life shall last,
and our eternal home.

10.15.2009

Arab Church Camp

Church Camp proved to be an enlightening and fun experience last weekend. I discovered that it was officially named Church Camp rather than Church Retreat for a reason. While I laughed a lot and delighted in feeling used by the Lord, little actual rest was involved in the weekend.

I did come home encouraged by the ways God has used this church to bring people to Himself, especially after hearing testimonies from a few Muslim background believers. I also returned on Sunday with more appreciation for Arab culture, especially the relational and communal nature of it, after being immersed in it for 48 hours with no escape. It was nothing for six guys ranging from six- to 18-years-old to wrestle and play for hours Saturday night. No one was really in a rush to leave Sunday afternoon, so some of the women sat and drank tea and talked together for a while after lunch. For Arabs, life is shared with those around you, and nothing seems more important.

Leading the youth was challenging, but fun. My patience, creativity, and ability to teach were all tried and developed as a result. The youth had many questions for us in response to our times of study and discussion together regarding what a relationship with God looks like, in what ways life is better when you are a Christian, how to share their faith with their family, and how to discern between right and wrong in regards to media exposure, substance use, and relationships.

The highlight of the weekend for me was equipping the youth to perform a drama for the church's variety show. We hurriedly practiced on Saturday, and when they performed on Saturday night, they moved the church to cheers and tears. I was so proud of them. The church has never expected them to contribute, nor really pays them much notice. In turn, the youth don't recognize their responsibility to the body of Christ and don't understand the ways in which they are gifted. However, this weekend offered a different story. You can watch the drama here.

I'll tell you the rest in pictures:

















































































Please pray for these youth to question, wrestle, and seek God individually, and with their family and this youth group. Pray that God would reveal Himself to each of these youth in an undeniable way. Also, please pray for discipleship to take place in the lives of church members.

10.08.2009

You can call me Miss Claire

Hi friends! I just finished my first week teaching English classes and thought I'd give you a short synopsis.
I love our students already. We have students from the Syria, Congo, Poland, Portugal, Belgium, Morocco, Albania, Senegal, and Iran, ranging from age 13 to 60-something. They are (for the most part) very eager to learn and fun to get to know. As you can imagine, you learn to laugh at yourself a good bit when you're learning a foreign language, so we've been able to laugh together a good bit already. We have 4 levels of classes, with the highest being a conversation class. This year, only one student enrolled in conversation class, a 27 year-old woman who works for the European Union and also happens to be very friendly and easy to talk to. Essentially, we have a coffee date twice a week for the next 10 weeks to talk about whatever she wants. Finally, I enjoy teaching much more than I expected to, which makes class fun. I originally thought of English class only as a means to build deeper relationships with these individuals, but the process of helping someone grasp a word or concept has been satisfying as well.
Please pray for all these relationships being formed with our students: I want each individual we're teaching to think favorably of Christ by the end of the semester because of knowing Janee, Hary and I, and I want each student to see and hear the Gospel as clearly as possible by the end of the semester.
I leave tomorrow for a church-wide weekend retreat in Waterloo. The adults of the church will be led by a guest pastor from Germany and worship leader from Syria, while Janee and I will lead separate sessions for the youth during the same time. We've planned about 9 hours worth of Bible study and discussion focused on our identity in Christ: who we are as Christ-followers, what our message is as such, and the practical daily application of that in our lives. This is the first time for most of the youth to participate in something like this, and likely the first time they have personally engaged these ideas. Please pray for them to wrestle with God this weekend and respond to the Gospel with sincere understanding and joy!

10.04.2009

What is Better

Another week has passed here in Brussels, and with it, winter has arrived! I begrudgingly donned my winter coat for the first time tonight, but am thankful that the cold rain that characterizes Brussels has kept its distance so far. The beginning of this week has been more of a struggle for me than others. With neither a good grasp of French nor a strong competency in Arab culture, I've wrestled a lot with a strong feeling of uselessness. Have you ever felt this way?

If you have, you know it is an effort to convince yourself that you are NOT purposeless, NOT aimless, NOT disposable, and NOT just a "bump on a log," as my mom would say. You know Jesus' hint that those who are trusted with very little can be trusted with much seems easier said than done (Lk 16:10). This feeling isn't completely unfamiliar to me, but being in a place far from friends and family and living here solely by the gifts of others seems to magnify it. I was not commissioned to be useless. God knew what I needed, and gave me a reprieve from the drag of this feeling on Saturday in the form of slapping together hundreds of cheese sandwiches and ladling bowls of hot soup. The Arab church serves with a local organization called Tabitha Ministries once every five weeks to make and serve dinner to hundreds of homeless women, men, and children in Brussels. Nothing will make you feel useful like being part of a concerted effort to feed over 200 people on a cold night. I watched the piles of sandwiches grow as we worked in the kitchen, and later that night I watched them enter the mouths of the city's hungry and poor. It was the definition of seeing a tangible result of your work, and selfishly, it felt great.

There are many moments from Saturday night that I wish I could elaborate on: seeing the hoards of people already waiting for food when we arrived downtown, numerous Muslims debating about whether the food we gave was halal (acceptable by God to be consumed), and silently snacking on spicy Cheetos with a homeless man and woman who couldn't understand my French. But there was one moment that was seared into my mind. While serving soup at the end of the line, I witnessed an uncomfortable encounter between a ministry volunteer and a homeless man. The man's hands were dripping with hot coffee as he attempted to also balance a bag of non-perishables, three sandwiches wrapped in a paper towel, and a cup of soup. The volunteer noticed his struggle and reached for his sandwiches to try to help him adjust his handful. The man angrily jerked away, spilling more of his coffee and now his soup on his arm. Persistently, the volunteer tried again, only to be met with an audible, angry snarl. At this point, the cup of coffee was mostly empty and the soup cup was close to the same. Patiently, the volunteer moved again to help the man, and this time he relented. Quickly, the sandwiches were tucked into the bag and placed on his shoulder, leaving a free hand for his coffee and a free hand for his cup of soup. The volunteer led the man back to the table to replenish both, and after the man hurriedly scuffled away.

I couldn't stop thinking, "That's me." Like the man, I rigidly cling to what I have and what I know, and become frenzied and annoyed when the familiar is disrupted; when the tangible is threatened. Is that you? This man didn't understand that there was a better way to get his food home, and likewise, I too have refused to consider any better ways to be useful here than the ways I know and prefer. As the volunteer gently tried to help the man fit more, take more, eat more, the man refused the outstretched hand. Why? Was it fear, pride, or impatience? Whatever the reason, he refused to let go and receive what was better. When God tries to rearrange things; when he asks us to let go, He is usually offering us something more and better. What are you clinging to?

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. Mark 8:35.

Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matthew 7:9-11.