Trying to find the right words...

It is very challenging to put into words the experiences of being here. That is a humbling thing for a person who tends to be very word oriented. This is one of the reasons that we need poets and artists … to say that which is hard to express in other ways. But since I'm not one of those, I continue to speak and write as I am able.

It is an amazing thing to spend time with people with great faith in God, people whom God has called to a great task, of bringing hope to many who are without hope, people who live in a world that is so different from my own and yet that is their home.

It is sobering to think what they must think of me as the foreigner, as one who is connected with the image of American culture that has been projected to the world.

Even as I begin to get some sense of what it is like being here, I realize that I haven’t got a clue! For my students, I fit into the category of American professors who come for 2 weeks at a time to teach, primarily to impart knowledge. For people on the street, I am an oddity that generally they seem to try to ignore. Yet there are people who seem not to be able to resist, smiling and waving or wondering what in the world I am doing.

It seems that people are fairly reserved, both in public and with individuals. In my experience, people have been less inclined to talk than many Americans. (Which leads me immediately to say that some Americans, including some in my family, are quite content to use few words in a day.) In an effort to get to know my students over lunch, I ask questions. Perhaps they think I am a non-stop communicator. Perhaps I am too pushy. My sense is that they are graciously putting up with us. Am I being insensitive? Or am I being loving to try to draw them out?

So what are the chances that what I am teaching will really help them in their lives and ministries? They graciously express appreciation, and it seems that they are wrestling with important issues. I give them time to speak in Burmese with each other, and they seem to be engaged in meaningful ways … yet how would I really know?

But then again, is that any different from preaching and teaching in the US? People graciously express appreciation, but are souls really being fed and shaped into the image of Christ?

One of our big ideas is that the work we seek to do in the church is a work that only God can do through His Spirit, and yet He calls us to be skillful tools in His hands to do that work. Generally we cannot separate what God does and what we do. We proclaim, and He speaks through our speaking of His words.

So in humility, we seek to be as skillful/wise as we can be while depending upon His Spirit to be at work doing what we cannot do, “as though God were making His appeal through us.” (2 Cor. 5:20)

So I continue to teach and live, longing to impart a spiritual gift even as we are mutually encouraged by each others’ faith (Romans 1:11-12).