This morning I'm thinking about people. No one in particular, just people. Different kinds, different styles, different cultures, different statures, different beliefs. It's incredible. I had a moment at a swimming pool last year in Ethiopia... I was sitting on one side just watching and on the other side, several guys were standing in a line getting ready to dive... there were a few Chinese, a Swedish guy(Samuel), Somali men, and a guy from Sudan. I was shocked at the physical differences between each one! Of course it's obvious that some cultures are a little taller, a little darker, and little more slanty-eyed... but how many times in your life do you get to watch the peculiar line-up that I had before me that day?? It was beautiful. And strange.
I'm going to a school for immigrants now and in my class we have people representing around 20 different cultures. Wow! Iraqi, Pakistani, Thai, Albanian, Polish, Iranian, Japanese, American(me!), Kenyan, Argentinean, Turkish, Bulgarian, Scandinavian... gah... what an incredible place I get to go to each day! We are all drastically different. The majority religion is Islam and then a few Buddhists. We are all slumped into one category here - immigrants - but that's just about the only thing that we have in common. Yesterday the Argentinean girl sneezed and we went around the room saying each language/culture form of the American "God bless you!" Yes I'm stating the obvious here.... but can you picture how drastically different that one phrase was from one person to the next?? A simple and silly thing like a sneeze made me step back for a moment and see the world in all of it's colorful masses of people. Don't even get me started on the food that comes out during our break! I don't even bring anything for myself because everyone else is offering me a buffet of different menus.... sticky rice, spicy crunchy things, prunes covered in some kind of doughy ball... where's the pudding snacks and pretzel sticks??? Oh I love these cultures!
So how in the world do you reach them???? How do you tell people about God? About Jesus? Life? The cross and salvation? What's the universal key to open up hearts and share the truth?
Fervent prayer covered over with the act of compassion. I think it was around 3 years ago when a guy named Sam Johnson (from Priority One Missions) came to speak at my church... I'll never forget his message. It stuck to me in such a simple way. Compassion is the heart of God, where it makes contact with human need. Compassion is practical, compassion is universal, compassion is costly and compassion does something. He used the story of the man in the Bible who was beat up and robbed and left laying in a ditch. The religious passed him by, the wealthy passed him by.... then compassion stopped to bandage the wounds and feed the tummy. It sounds so simple. So obvious. When was the last time you did it though? When did you stop and show a little compassion? It's practical, universal and costly. But it is indeed the key to people.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing that can change a people or a nation. It's the only thing that lasts. In terms of foreign fields, bowls of rice or pills with medication with only effect a person for a certain period of time - but Jesus is everlasting. The Gospel must be preached. However, compassion in many cases is the key to opening up the door to the Gospel. In the West compassion may take on a new face. Maybe it's words of life (those are hard to come by for most), maybe it's a latte just because, maybe it's this or that or the other thing... you must find out for yourself. It will be costly though. It will cost you a reputation, time, even your life. I'm no professor in the field of compassion and evangelism but I have given my life to it. It's the thing I chase after.
The world offers just about everything except compassion. In the world you will find pleasure, success, achievements, conditional love, neglect, selfishness... compassion is rare. It has the power to stop a person in their tracks and strip them to the core. Compassion = action. It's a verb, not a noun. Compassion speaks English, Spanish, Hindi, Afrikaans. Compassion is the key to hearts. Hearts that can then be filled with Jesus.
