Not-So-Urban Plunge

This past Saturday, we experienced the highly anticipated Urban Plunge where we spent 12 hours learning about and experiencing love for our neighbors.  The day started off with a 7:30am message from Tom Tarrants (director of the Fellows Program) who commissioned us "not to wait for the warm fuzzies to occur" but to start loving those around us regardless.  This carried the same element in which Peter Kreeft tells us that "humility is a means to love" and that "love cannot happen without humility and self-forgetfulness" (p.186).  How often have I centered charity and love around myself and wasn't willing to forsake my own feelings and expectations in demonstrating that brutal, self-forgetting love?  How many times have I used the excuse of "not feeling led" when all needed to be done was just let go?

The Lord really humbled me that day as we proceeded to the next activity, in which the entire group was split to spend the morning with one of the three designated organizations.  The organization we were assigned to was Casa Chirilagua, where approximately ten individuals have surrendered to the call of serving the migrant community from Central America.  This was very different from other service organizations in that this wasn't a building with a flashy sign that indicated who they were nor was it a typical place where volunteers came in and out to serve.  No, this was an ordinary town home in the middle of the Chirilagua neighborhood where people lived and carried out their daily lives amongst the migrant community.

It turns out, this organization was created when three young women (DC professionals) decided to define their "neighbors" as literally those living amongst them and move into the neighborhood to serve and share lives together with the residents of Chirilagua.  There wasn't a set agenda but just to live among those in need and begin to share the love of Christ in the most tangible way... living their lives together and being a testament to one another's joys and struggles.  They would soon come to canvass the neighborhood and organically identify the needs and mobilize others to come join in the service.

You are, by now, probably envisioning a run-down neighborhood somewhere in DC where these "poor immigrants" reside with graffiti and litter abound.  Perhaps this is what I had expected as we were driven to this location without much detail.  However, this would come to a shock to me, as we drove into the neighborhood located none else but at the border of affluent Alexandria City and Arlington, Virgina... and less than a five-minute drive from my home.  These are the same streets I had driven through on my way to CVS and Giant and didn't even think twice.  How could this be?  Especially for someone who had once worked on the U.S.-Mexico border serving the migrant community?  How is that that I never once wondered about the needs and reality of this neighborhood that stared right into my face?

In Luke 10, we read about an expert of the law who postulates the question, "Who is my neighbor?" when Jesus shares the greatest commandments of "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27).  Well, I need to search no further.  My neighbors are the neighbors who literally reside minutes from me.  My neighbors are precisely those from areas where I have so passionately served in the past.  My neighbors are those who have been right under my nose.

So here I am at an obvious crossroad.  I could either sit here and wonder if I "feel led" or called to serve my neighbors and perhaps wait for the warm fuzzies to develop... or I could just get up and start walking towards Chirilagua.  The outcome looks pretty clear, and I believe Jesus would tell me the same -- "Go and do likewise."

Higher Ground for the Marketplace

At my first meeting with my mentor, I was asked about my goals and expectations for the upcoming year and how she could best contribute to my growth process.  The answer was simple—to embrace my life as a marketplace Christian with utmost conviction and a steadfast heart.  My role as a Christian in the workplace is something I had taken for granted for a long time, and I had finally come to a point where I realized I had to start struggling for that life, one that is seasoned with grace, kindness, and integrity.

In Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, Martyn Lloyd-Jones explains that Christians carry “something unusual, something explicable and something elusive” that is quite distinct from the world.  She further explains that the uniqueness of the Christian personhood is grand and that “there is nothing more tragic than the failure on the part of many professing Christians to realize the uniqueness and the special character of a Christian” (p. 276).

This does not insinuate that Christians are above all others and should carry the “holier than thou” attitude.  Far from it, Christians are called to demonstrate that amazing grace and to execute their responsibilities beyond their own natural abilities.  Christians are called to “separate from all others, and not only from the worst among others, but from the very best and highest among them” (p. 277).  And this can only be done as we acknowledge and demonstrate God-centered love in everything we do.  

Our inability to shine better as marketplace Christians goes beyond our ambitions, greed, and competitiveness.  It is the “self-centered ugliness of sin” that John Piper explains in Learning to Savor the Love of God.  Through this, I’ve come to realize that my shortcomings in the workplace haven’t been my inability to be a “good person.”  Rather, it was my failure to savor the God-centered love of God, because I had all too often tried to put myself at the center of it.

I am grateful to God that He has allowed His rays to shine into my heart to awaken His beauty not only in my personal walk with Him but into the workplace He has called me to serve.  "The ugliness of self-exalting sin is revealed.  The glory of God-exalting love is discovered.  And we set ourselves on a quest to savor it more and more forever and ever.”  And as I set out to continue tasting that truly aligned love He has for me, I know I will be able to live out my call as a Christian with graciousness and the mannerism that will allow me to disarm others and infiltrate the God-centered love and grace to into their lives.  Like the streaming waters, I will walk closer and closer toward that ray and continue moving forth with grace, kindness, and integrity before Him.