Crystal Clear

I was told a story about a group of North Americans who visited a Latin American country to help rebuild after a natural disaster.

One day, a truck pulls up with stones for the cement. A local worker begins to shovel it out, one shovelful at a time, while the truck driver sits in his cab. A couple of the North American men jump up on the truck to help the ‘poor’ guy.

The driver jumps out of the truck and is very angry.

The entire truck is not meant to be emptied. Each shovelful was being counted and would be charged for. That count is now disrupted.

Very rarely does acting first and listening later actually produce a better result. How many times do we need to watch and experience that the most important thing is to listen first?

No one feels good when someone comes at you with an “I know what your problem is and I’m going to help you fix it, or fix it for you.”

I read a book called “When Helping Hurts” which looks at this deeper and more clearly than I’ve seen laid out before. Read the book or at least look at this visual book summary (when_helping_hurts2).

Because trying to help could actually end up hurting someone, it is critical we think deeper. Just trying to help isn’t enough.

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I had a disappointing season with my vegetable gardens this year. My plot at home doesn’t get a lot of sun due to buildings, trees and fences blocking the important rays. I rented a space with full sun from the city at a common allotment. The city space came with automatic watering, which I thought would be a plus. It’s been a fairly wet and cool summer and the city automatically waters every night.

Plants don’t grow when they are in soggy ground, no matter how much sunshine they get.

I went today after almost two weeks away. The weeds were tall, sure. But so many leaves are yellowish from too much water, and the plants are not thriving. (To top it off, my onions which were doing great have all had their tops eaten by deer!)

It was a fairly disappointing visit.

As I biked home, I reflected on the subsistence farmers I met while in Zambia. Being a subsistence farmer means that you eat what you grow. If you don’t grow enough, you don’t eat enough. Having excess to sell is rare.

Seemingly outside of my control in my garden is the amount of water it receives. Drought or flooding in Zambia would also be outside of the control of subsistence farmers.

I had a small taste, I think, of the enormity of spending all ones time with the chance of no harvest, which is the life of a subsistence farmer.

I am glad I work for an organization which works among the poorest farmers to help them find ways beyond subsistence farming, like diversification, compost, mulch, drainage, improved seeds and the like, so that a bad year might only mean just enough food, but no extra, and a normal year means the ability to improve (house, clothing, livestock, education) and to celebrate life.

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While in Africa, I heard a lot about food security. A family has food security if they are able to grow enough food to feed themselves the entire year, even through the lean dry season.

I read about the UK and their desire to be able to grow enough food within the country to feed everyone, especially as transport costs and carbon emissions are now a big issue.

I think that Canada as an entire country could grow enough food to feed everyone in it. But the country is so big, with grains being grown in the west, and fruits and vegetables in BC and Ontario mostly, which would mean there are still significant transport issues.

Most people are currently food secure to purchase their food, but each of us is nowhere close to having the ability to grow enough for our own families. Maybe Canada isn’t so ‘developed’ after all.

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A colleague prayed this the other day to God: “You only know right” and it struck me as something profound. God is good and so he only knows what is good and right. Evil is so far from who he is.

My colleague went further and talked about how since God only knows right and is all powerful he could fix all the problems the world in an instant. But his choice is to know us, to have a relationship with us, made possible through Jesus, and then to use us in his plan to accomplish what is good and right.

Huh.

I reflected on that for my life, my work and my church, and thought that if God chooses to know people and work through them, that I should act similarly – to get to know people and work together with them for what is right.

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I value speaking simply and plainly, and with honesty. It is hard to do in practice.

I find it harder, and yet feel it is even more important as I interact with (sometimes) competing voices in my work. We all really do have the same goals, yet since our sub goals may differ, we get to the same bigger goals on different paths.

So, sometimes we compete.

And our choice is to on the surface pretend to work together, which I would call being diplomatic, or to do the harder work of speaking simply and plainly, and to find ways to really work together.

I want to not feel like a diplomat.

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In the Reformed Christian tradition, there is a lot talk about spreading the gospel through Word and Deed ministry. I’m reading a book that calls attention to ‘Signs’ as a necessary third part. In animist cultures, signs and wonders have to do with power: which God is more powerful?

In North America, and our rational, dualistic worldview, we have no place for signs and wonders. Charismatic churches, who experience and are not afraid of signs and wonders are the fastest growing churches. Not a coincidence.

This is something our Majority World church brothers and sisters can teach us. I’m ready to listen and learn!

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