Today I went for a cycle down a path that runs along a river near where I live. I wanted to clear my head before sitting down and writing this update. After winding along the river, past clumps of trees, over a few hills, I stumbled upon the ruins of a chapel built in the 14th century, 1320, to be exact. Some of the bricks used to build it actually came from remains of a Roman settlement! I sat in the open crevice of what used to be a window, no longer filled with stained glass, and fought to visualize the nearly 700 years of history to which this structure had borne witness. Before I was born, before my grandparents were born, before radios, before central heating, before electricity, before the United States of America, before the English Reformation, before Gutenberg... over 255,000 sun rises ago...
It was quite humbling. I felt my smallness in the vast expanse of time. Surrounded by ancient stones, under an ancient sun, in an ancient country, I realized why so many poets and philosophers despaired of significance, why Keats insisted his tombstone read, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
God is so vast, "He sees all the children of man" (Psalm 33:13). He sees every single person ever born, every war, every moment of human suffering, every plague, every genocide, every abuse... and yet He still cares intimately for each one of us and is aware of every tear we cry -- "You Yourself have recorded my wanderings. Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your records?" (Psalm 56:8 HCSV).
I've been thinking quite* a bit about scale, time, and perspective this past month. It has been an especially busy month at IJM. In the last weekend of February alone, we had almost 200 people attend our benefit dinner in London, a church leaders conference, and speaking engagements at 7 church services in one day! Gary Haugen came and spoke at each one of these events (despite being sick!), and we were deeply blessed and encouraged by his time with us.
At the church leader's conference, Gary spoke about the boring side of justice work... not what I or anyone at the conference was expecting, but what we, or at least I, desperately needed to hear. Gary emphasized that justice is an attitude of the heart, not one-off actions. Yes, it does involve glorious and exciting moments of breaking chains, gathering people from the dark, forsaken corners of oppression and releasing them into the light of freedom, busting down brothel doors, and defending human dignity in courtrooms; but thousands more moments are filled with endless piles of paperwork, years of driving for miles everyday to a court room where a judge doesn't show up, hours of sitting with victims too afraid to seek help... so many of IJM's cases are only successful by the grace of God and the relentless, patient obedience of people who never stop to question, "is this even worth it?"
The boring side of justice work I can absolutely relate to. As incredible as my time here with IJM UK has been, the actual daily tasks I do are -to be brutally honest- boring. Hours and hours of meticulous, difficult, never ending tasks. I've wrestled with feeling guilty for finding the work boring. Hearing Gary openly admit that justice work often is boring, and that's okay, relieved me. I realized that being joyful in my work doesn't mean finding joy in every single task, it means choosing to be bored for the sake of joy.
After the IJM Benefit, one of our partners made a profound remark that has widened my perspective on the work that I do. He said, "In eternity to come, we will look back on these events, I am sure, and shed tears of joy as we see what the Lord has made of our frail contributions."
I have made many frail (VERY frail) contributions to IJM and the work of justice, contributions that honestly do not amount to much by any earthly standard. But my focus has been all wrong. In the grand but very real story of redemption God is writing for humanity, are not all our contributions frail? And yet God has proven to be a God who uses weak, foolish, inadequate, insignificant contributions to write His story, and for all of eternity, we will rejoice with tears of joy over what the Lord has done with our frail contributions.
Last Friday we had our quarterly day of prayer -- a day we put aside our work at the office and worship and pray together. During one session, we each spent some time alone with the Lord while writing a timeline of our life. It was a powerful time for me to reflect on how the Lord has provided for me through every stage of life, how He has been gracious in my struggles, how He has used my suffering for good things, and how He has prepared me for every season. So many of you have been a formative part of my timeline, and I am truly grateful for the ways you have prepared me for this part of my journey. Thank you!
*Funny story about the word "quite." In the US, "quite" has a positive connotation. If something is quite good, it is especially, particularly, pointedly good. I happen to use the word quite a lot in conversation. A few days ago, after leaving an event with my British housemate, I commented that the event was "quite lovely!" My housemate then admitted to me she never can tell if I've actually enjoyed something or if I'm just being polite, because in the UK people use the word with a negative connotation. If you don't have anything nice to say about something, you'd describe it as quite good, just to be nice. I have probably offended or confused a hundred people since coming to the UK just by using that one word! And here I was thinking we spoke the same language... haha.
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