South Africa.Familiar sounding, but faint when my mind attempted to formulate a picture of what it looks like. It's in the Sub-Saharan region of Africa and it's overseas-definition complete? Hardly.
Being a newbie to traveling plus about 25 hours of airtime all together, I was hardly thinking about what to expect when I would first arrive in South Africa. I just new that there was a destination in which I was given the opportunity to GO, so I went.
"Why?" the Semester Interviewer Carrie asked back in Spring of 07'. My reply: Global perspective on people, God, culture...true, but lacking fervor. I don't claim any Spiritual authority that God specifically whispered in my ear: "Souuuuutthhh Afriiiccaaa" - but I will say that God made the idea of South Africa move within me and whether he was saying now or later or never, I sat and prayed and said, "I want this God. I want to do this. I want this opportunity to learn about life in such a different manner than I've ever known before. I don't mean to bargain with you, so I'll just tell you right now...if the doors open on this one for me. I'm going." Little did I know He was listening.
In a nutshell, I came here to learn. I wanted to get a taste of a reality beyond my own. I prayed to get here and now I'm praying to BE here. As Kyle Lake puts it in his book, (re)Understanding Prayer:
"So a better translation of the biblical word "believe" would be to place the full weight of your life in something........Take whatever it is you're praying about, whatever it is you're believing. Then apply movement. Perspiration. Muscle. Initiative. Exertion. Arms working. Feet running. Eyes reading. Mind thinking. Anything less is not a whole-life following of Christ."
If we're being honest here, I wanted God to specifically do one thing for me while I flew over a bed of clouds that looked like a second layer of ocean on the plane. I wanted to be humbled and let me take a moment to expand on that.
Humbled. Not in the manner when I comfortably mention in my 5 person bible-study how the Lord is really breaking me, clinging to an insecure need to label everything God does in my life. I mean, HUMBLED.
One thing I've learned is that often American culture see's Africa as this RITE OF PASSAGE for our faith. We go there, help the poor little black suffering Africans and come home like a pompous child hoping for recognition: "oh, look at me Jesus, I'm so GOOD. Did you see what I did over there in Africa!?"
I mean HUMBLED like the version where my head get's taken out of my ass. This version would imply a couple of things: 1) I realize that I don't have a grip on things, 2)I don't know everything, 3)my culture ISN'T the best, 4) and that God has MUCH bigger things on his plate than me wining over a 7 page paper and what Church I want to attend back in Azusa.
This version would imply my 32 year old CCC roommate from Lisotho, Kaama, who sits next to my bed late at night and explains to me how he was beat and left for dead, bleeding profusely, lying on the dirt ground and in his last waning moments of life. As his body is rushed to a hospital in critical care, Kaama's body decides to completely cave in. Constriction. Loss of breath. Death upon him. And as he lay in his hospital bed, knowing that he is done for, as an unbeliever he says, "God I don't know if you are real, but if you are out there, if you give me breath again, I promise I will devote my entire life to you and do whatever you ask of me."
BAM! AND THE VERY SECOND HE FINISHED THAT THOUGHT... AIR RUSHES THROUGH HIS LUNGS AGAIN. Life breathes in Kaama, Kaama breathes in God. And from there, the rest is history. His life is God's and he couldn't be HAPPIER. The exchange of that relationship between him and God completely outweighs the physical damage done to the left side of his body.
Humbled in the fashion in which a fellow CCC student named Reagan pulls me alongside him, in a free, flowing love that circulates through his words with genuineness and grace and shares with me the death of his brother and his brother's child and it's hurtful effect on his family and self. Then as he continues on, he says:
"Don't feel sorry for me. Don't feel like there are two sides of me. The happy Reagan and the sad Reagan that I hide. I have no cover up. This is me. I have learned to merge my scars. I now HEAL THROUGH MY WOUNDEDNESS and it is A PART OF MY BEING."
Beautiful. Little did I know that this bright young man was going to steal two books of mine, read them both in three weeks, one of which I have had for a year and have not read to this day. Little did I know that this young man would decide to drop a note in one of the books for me as a parting gift.
The interesting thing is that when I discovered this note I was questioning heavily my commitment to ministry. Was it something that I really wanted to do (the 1st time I have questioned this since I was 15 years old btw). In Reagan's parting note he explains a prayer he has for me. It reads:
"Dear Ryan...I am blessed indeed by you. I am blessed by your love for ministry and my prayer is that you realize that: Your calling for ministry transcends the boundaries & limitations of the States and even the west! My prayer is that God would bring you out and enrich you with awesome experiences as far as ministry in its totality is concerned. Perhaps we'll meet again...in the business of the Kingdom.
Love,
Reagan"
It may not seem much to you, but whoever you are, you're not ME. And this was ALL I needed.
HUMBLED. Where I acknowledge the poverty that lies 15 minutes away in the Township of Gugulethu or Kyalitsha - where there are literally neighborhoods of homemade shacks built with mud, fire wood, or metal boards - scarce money, scarce water, scarce electricity (if any of these things). Where families LIVE under those conditions, jam-packed in shacks that were half the size of my room where I was staying in Cape Town. Humbled in the manner that saw a certain contentment in the workers of a childcare center in the middle of a township that had little kids, stacked next to eachother with every inch available, napping. The smiles on the caretakers faces were telling. If you ask me, undermanned... WITH babies and toddlers does not equal success. But that just goes to show you the strength and beauty of a woman.
Now let me share an observation. Do these impacting situations that have impressed humility upon my heart for God's people seem like stuff I'M DOING!? NO. And that's exactly the point.
I don't want this experience to become a fairytale of how much I DID or how much I've been through. The point would be entirely missed.
I just want this experience to enter straight into my heart and help me live in every breath...the way Kaama showed me is possible.
I just want this experience to LEAVE from my heart and help me BE. In every language-barrier conversation, every powerful worship experience, every braii, in each exposure to someone expressing their heart sincerely to God. I saw this trait in Reagan's eyes as he shared about the tragic death of his brother. I want that LOOK. That look of appreciating not everyTHING we have, but every MOMENT we have in this life.
As time in Peitermaritzburg expires and the educational season comes down to the end. I'm thanking God for three meals a day, I'm thanking God for good health care, I'm thanking God for an abstaining sexual lifestyle (meaning I don't have HIV/AIDS), I'm thanking God that He works in ways I DON'T understand. I'm thanking God that He is preparing me, readying me, breaking me down, unlayering me to the point of selfless exhaustion and fervent desire to make an impact in our community development opportunities that will be handed to us in just a couple more weeks. I'm thanking God for how tired I'm going to be from wanting to help so bad. All things I never did prior to Africa. My advice: thank God.
Let me just be real with you. I don't have it together and I don't have it figured out and I am NOT fearless and I AM a jerk.
Hi, my name is Ryan Birch, and I'm a Christian.
Your response: "HHHIiiiiiiI Ryyaaannnn"
But I tell you what. God does have it together, amidst the craziness of worldly suffering. God does have it figured out, amidst the doubts we also act off of. God IS fearless in the face of all things evil. God IS LOVE, amidst HIV/AIDS victims, the poor, the widowed wives or brothers, amidst the moments of breathlessness in hospitals. God is GOOD.
I love this MESSAGE translation of Matt 11:28-30:
"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me--watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."
So where I pick up from here is where I leave you off. I'm trying to get away with Christ and walk with Him. I feel like He's beside me, as I watch monkeys run past my classroom, do 7 page papers, listen to friends pour their hearts out in difficult situations, and especially in a laugh or two. South Africa is wrapping me up in the HERE AND NOW and I'm willing to go with that. I'm attempting to be apart of those "unforced rhythms of grace" and finding joy. Not a complacent, disregarding joy, but a joy that resides in knowing God more and more through all of the sorrow and all of the goodness at the same time.
Now that I've received a few defining moments upon my stay let me try this once again:
South Africa.
My humbling teacher. My rhythm of grace. My reality check.
I'm thinking God liked the idea of me coming here after all.
