Not Lazy or Unproductive

I can’t just sit and do nothing, right? That could be deemed lazy and unproductive, especially in the world we live in and how our Christian culture has ingrained in us how each minute of every day should be used to advance the Kingdom of God. But what if sitting and listening was actually an active and productive way to advance the Kingdom of God? What if it was an act of loving our neighbour as yourself?

Last fall I had the opportunity to bring a small group of people to the Dominican Republic to visit two wonderful organizations in Santo Domingo and Monte Plata. The purpose was clear: we meet with people to share stories of our work in each of our contexts and we learn from each other. Seems simple enough! Not even 24 hours into the trip that I started getting questions from the group on the theme of “how can we do more”, that feeling of embarrassment for being there “only to listen.” In seeing a different context, seeing scarcity versus abundance the desire for participants to want to jump into guilt-driven action was palpable. We need to do a lot of deconstruction on why we feel this urge. It's never ill-intentioned but as someone who has worked in community development for over 15 years, it’s almost inevitable. Collectively, we need to work on how we see ourselves and the world.

That sentence stuck with me, what we see and what they see is quite different and what if they are right and we are wrong?

Each year I lead cohorts of young adults for what we call the Urban Lab, a spiritual and practical formation for emerging leaders. We go through different modules: how to see, how to be and how to act like Jesus. Each year the most challenged subjects are how to see and how to act like Jesus. Jesus saw cities and people with abundance versus scarcity; He also sat and took time nurturing relationships with people asking questions about their needs first and foremost, “what do you want from me?”

In the last days of our trip, we went to visit a family who is having their house built by young adults learning the trade. Before we even got to the neighbourhood our host made sure to tell us: “what you will see might not be a great house or you might think it’s run down but it’s not, it’s a style of house that exists here”. That sentence stuck with me, what we see and what they see is quite different and what if they are right and we are wrong?

The same day, we spent a few hours in the afternoon with former sugar-cane workers who came from Haïti to work in fields. What our human eyes saw first was small make-shift houses, dirt roads, and buckets as chairs. What the eyes of our heart saw by the end of the meeting was twinkles in people’s eyes when sharing their stories, laughter and jokes. They were not in denial of their stories and hardship but they were choosing abundance of joy and who were we to tell them otherwise?

The two organizations we visited are doing such great work with the community they serve, we got to witness it, learn and share ideas. They are the ones who know their communities and have asked the questions “what can I do?”, it wasn’t our job. Our role was to encourage, pray, share resources with the people who knew what to do.