Our Final Days

I'm on the airplane right now writing this blog entry. By the time many of you read this Josiah and I will already be home. Our last days are a bit of a blur to me now. We finished up the conference at the Frontline Worship Center, and on the last day of the conference we had the privilege of serving the people of the Baloc campus.
Privileged. That's honestly what I feel; privileged. It's hard to describe the feelings I have any other way. I'm almost 100 percent certain that the poor of Baloc, of Gruar, of the Philippines, were more of a blessing to Josiah and I than we could ever have been to them. The way in which their faces reflect gratitude exemplify how we ought to be in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. They lack so much that the slightest act of kindness fills their hearts to overflowing. The weight of the lessons I have learned here will no doubt loose their potency with time, as I reenter the material wealth and comfort of life in Canada. I only pray that the images that I have will fan a flame that can resist dulling effects of life back home.
The poor, Jesus said, will always be with us. In Canada, the poor are invisible. They are hidden in shelters and low income housing. Unless you intentionally place yourself in their path you may never know them. In the Philippines however, the poor are everywhere. You cannot escape the evidence of their existence and it breaks the heart.
I have so many questions for the Father. How do I carry on with this breaking in my heart? How do I let myself continually be broken on their behalf? How do I keep from being dulled, made passive, by the care and concern of the material life? I need Him to Father me in these areas if I am to father Josiah in like manner. How will I help him to understand the weight, the full weight, of what the Father has privileged us with? How do we carry what He has placed in our hearts and still carry on in the life that He has given us? How can we do Him justice? How do we seek justice for the poor on His behalf? I am now more than ever full of questions than I was before, and so much more aware of my need for is Fathering than I realized.
Josiah and I had a wonderful day in Taipei together. We managed to take a free half day tour of the city. We got to see some beautiful sights, in what I would describe to be a beautiful city. All in all it was a good opportunity to transition back into western life. But as we were swept up in the day I could feel dulling effects setting in; the glitz and glamour of the west. I didn't recognize it at first, but after reflecting I realized I could feel my heart grieving. Grieving the loss of fully feeling the plight of the poor as I allowed myself to be caught up in the clean and clear sheen of glass, steel, and technology. I grieved the presence of the poor who cause us to consider their lives. They are not matter out of place, as we are socialized to believe they are, but they are a treasure to behold and a reminder of our own state of being. Jesus said blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom and heaven… blessed are the meek: for they will inherit the earth. From what I experienced among the poor in Manila and San Pablo, the Kingdom of God is there in their midst. By His grace I tasted it and I am broken by it.