January 11, 2007
Passion '07
"Oh Lord, your mercy turns us into grateful people
We can't seem to find the words
So take our lives that there might be enough
To tell you how grateful
Lord, we are grateful"
Watermark, Grateful People
I finally took off my Passion wristband yesterday. It had gotten so stretched out that I simply pulled it off over my hand and slipped it on the gear shift in my car. I don't know why I kept it on as long as I did; maybe part of me was afraid once I removed it, I would somehow remove the change in me, remove the passion that was stirred in my heart.
I'm finding myself in the same predicament as when I returned from Romania; I'm not quite sure how to summarize the experience of Passion '07 to someone who wasn't there, or doesn't know much about it. I talked nonstop to my mom for more than two hours last weekend, and even that was just retelling bits of messages or catching her up on general things in my life. There is no way to succinctly summarize my heart change, my life change or what happened those four days to me and to the 24,000+ other people with whom I shared that space.
In my head I keep hearing little snippets of some of the speakers' messages, specifically John Piper's. At one point he asked, "Do you really want to be riding high in your SUV dropping nickels into other people's dreams?*" It was the first time I'd heard a major American pastor speak negatively about the middle class American Dream, and I never realized before how vehemently I agree with him. It's not something I've ever verbalized really, because it's what everyone wants, isn't it? To get married and live in a big house with enough extra bedrooms for your someday children and retire somewhere with a boat and a lake house and "leav[e] a big fat inheritance to your middle-aged children to confirm them in their worldliness," as he put it. And yes, culturally, part of me does want that. That is security. It is safety. It is being able to sleep at night knowing you can wake up the next morning and afford your Starbucks and everything will be okay. I would be lying to you, and to myself, if I said that part of me doesn't want that. But the catch is, in order for me to afford all those things, all I will EVER be able to do is drop nickels.
During the final session, Louie asked the students to stand if they'd heard the call that week to go out into the world - to go into the nations - on behalf of their Savior. One by one they began to rise around the Arena and we got on our symbolic knees before God and we prayed for them. But not before those of us sitting near one of those standing students put our hands on them. I was sitting on the floor during that session, so I was able to walk up a few risers and place my hand on some 20-year-old guy who'd just stood up before 18,000+ people to announce that he feels called. He doesn't know when or where or even how, but he knows he is going.
And here I am at 30 with my full-time job and my mortgage payments and my consumer debt, and though God has shaped my heart to love mercy, to want to do justice, I am covered in middle class America, and I am a slave to my lenders.
But yet, I still dream of dirt roads in India. I dream of standing by a well and placing my hand on the arm of someone who was born believing they were literally Untouchable, and telling them that their Creator has invited them to drink from a LIVING well. That they are loved by the God of the sky, the God of the ocean, the God of the heavens. When I sleep, I smell curry. I hear the strings of the sitar. And I see the gorgeous, brown-eyed faces of the three children my family has adopted as our own.
My cousin Matt will venture to India this Spring to pick up their fourth child from a Delhi orphanage, where she has spent the first four years of her life, speaking only Hindi, cared for by petite Indian woman. And soon her father will come and get her - this man who looks nothing like her and speaks a language she can't understand. But he is her daddy and his love for her will cause him to fly to her country so that he may bring her home.
He is our Daddy and His love for us caused Him to nail His only son to a cross for sins we haven't even committed yet! Just to bring us home. That is the message for the world, for all the nations, for all the people. And in His great grace and glory He may allow me - me! - to share it.
*Dr. Piper's exact quote: "The point is not what you do with your loose change. The point is: what you do with your life. You don’t want to always be sitting high in your SUV dropping nickels into other people’s dreams. Satan wants that for you. But you don’t! You want to dream your own dream for the glory of Christ. Why am I on this planet? What has God put me here for?"
Posted by hannah at 03:29 PM
