Thursday, November 1, 2007

My dear God,

Two years ago today I flew to Africa. I did not know what awaited me there. What I knew for sure is that I would work in a hospital. I would spend time with the missionaries. It would be hot.

As my thoughts travel back in time to Ankaase, I find a part of my heart missing, left behind with the Ghanaian people. Hospitality. Generosity. Love. Belonging. Beauty.

I think of the worship services. People singing at the top of their voices (not the bottom like we do in America), dancing, giving. So unlike us in America. They are fully in worship. Their whole beings filling God's house with joy, giving to God, rather than sitting back expecting more. Their faces radiate their love of God who has saved them. They know the dance of gratitude.

And when they pray, they are the hardest prayerers I have ever witnessed. They hold their heads and fervently pray aloud. Their whole bodies cry out to God in petition, in praise, in thanksgiving. They touch God and God touches them. They know the goodness of the Lord and believe wholeheartedly that God is alive, with them, touching the world.

People leave your church in America when they don't like something. They leave because they aren't being "fed." They leave because they don't get their own way.

I once heard a seminary professor say that the next great mission field would be the US because we have lost a sense of the Holy, of the graciousness of God, of our truest, deepest connection with God who is present in the world. We have lost the sense of our smallness in the midst of God's greatness. We have replaced God with ourselves. We have increased our own value and minimized yours. We have just tokens of faith left, used when we want something. When we don't get it, we blame you for our loss.

How is faith ever to be found in all its fullness as long as we sit on our own thrones?

Empty.
Lost.
We are empty, lost
without you.
Our self-constructed altars
rust, tarnish
because they are
not yours.
Our loves
grows small.
Our deep wells
dry up.
Our eyes
grow scales.
Our hearts
wither.
Our spirits
blow with the wind
taking them
to places
we do not wish
to go.
Empty. Lost.
We are empty, lost
without you.

Love, Andrea