Monday, July 21, 2014

The Gibeonite Policy

If you have lived anywhere in a developing or a recovering country as a westerner, you no doubt have experienced a plethora of requests whether it be from Roma at the street lights asking for money, a person with a sick child asking for assistance to "send their child out of country for medical care", a person needing a new roof for their home, or money to start a new business. The requests are numerous and can become quite stressful. In the culture where I reside at the moment, there is always this sense of urgency, "I need the money NOW, so and so is waiting for it" or "my child is getting sicker" or "my roof is leaking" or "this supplier will not wait any longer for me to begin the business". All requests needed to be fulfilled yesterday. The people have an art of putting pressure on you to act now, or to manipulate your thoughts and actions. I'm one of those weaklings that tend to trust people quicker than mistrust them, especially if they are crying and show me photos of their situation. So I give in to their requests much faster than I should. This has gotten me into a lot of trouble in the past and has resulted in a loss of much money, let alone the damage that was done to the requester by helping cause a dependency on others instead of helping them take responsibility for meeting their own needs.

These situations are unlike what Joshua experienced by the Gibeonites. In Joshua 9, the Gibeonites deceived Joshua and the elders out of a fear for their lives. Even though they were a neighbouring and powerful city, a group of them dressed up in worn out clothes and sandals, grabbed some old wine skins and stale bread and dragged themselves into Joshua's camp seeking a covenant with the Israelites. They claimed that they had come from a far away land, and had heard of the mighty God of the Israelites and so wanted to partner with them by serving them. The Gibeonites were manipulative and expressed that sense of urgency, vs. 11 "We are your servants; NOW then, make a covenant with us." Joshua and the men fell into their trap, vss. 14-15, "So the men of Israel took some of their provisions and did not ask for the counsel of the Lord. Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them, to let them live; and the leaders of the congregation swore an oath to them." Three days later, the Israelites learned that the city of Gibeon was just around the corner from them. But they were stuck, they couldn't go back on their promises to them, because they made an oath in the presence of the Lord.

Every time Joshua had waited on the Lord, the Lord gave them instruction and blessed them. But this time, he didn't take that time to do that. He had learned a great lesson, one which is applicable for us today. So as a CAMA team, we discussed this and decided to adopt what we will call "The Gibeonite policy". Whenever a request comes in, we will tell the requester that we need at least 24 hours to seek the will of our God on the matter.  They can return tomorrow then for the answer. If they are a person who will not respect our desire to pray about it first and continue to pressure us, then they are not worthy of the assistance they are seeking.  As we seek the Lord for wisdom, we will be bringing Him into the decision, taking the pressure off of us, it will help us to see the real heart of the requester and most of all it will give God glory. It will most like save us a few bucks as well!

Friday, July 11, 2014

Found a cucumber on my plant

I love plants, I love watching new leaves grow on them and watching flowers start to bud and to bloom, but I am not a gardener, in fact I really stink at it. One day I had a Kosovar professional gardener come in to teach a class on horticulture to my occupational therapy students. The students had a chance to plant seeds and starters as a practice of what they learned. Because the students knew that I had just moved into a new home with a huge yard and garden space, all of the students gave me what they planted instead of keeping their plants for themselves. So, I inherited tomato plants, peppers, strawberries and flowers, plus one cucumber plant.

Because it rained days on end, not allowing a single day to get into the garden to plant, the seeds started springing up in their cups and the starters started budding flowers in their pots. The rain finally stopped and I was able to get out and prep the garden spot and finally put these plants into the ground. Because I was told that the cucumber plant needed to have a stick to grow up on, and I didn't have one, I used a broken broom handle and tied it to the fence. So there it was, the lonely one cucumber plant all by its self, separate from all the other plants.

It hasn't been too difficult to be motivated to go out into the garden and plant these things, because each morning around 6 am, it seems all the women of the village, no matter what age they were, would go walking out toward the fields, with these heavy plough tools over their shoulders or they would be in their own yards working in their gardens, every single morning. It didn't take long to realise that if I was going to see any fruit from these plants and if I was going to fit well into this village, I was going to have to work hard to make it happen.

Now one difference between myself and these ladies is, I had a job (OT clinic and University) that kept me away from the house most of the day, 6 days a week, they didn't. So, their gardens are their place of work. They will till the ground around each plant every other day, they would pull the weeds and pull off the little starter leaves at the arm pit of each tomato branch, allowing for the nutrients to get to the tomatoes on the end. I, on the other had, didn't do that. My gardening skills consisted of watering every evening or in the mornings and once in a great while I would get out there a pull a few weeds so that I could find my plants again.

One day, after a long run of rainy days again, I went out to the lonely cucumber plant, and behold, I found a "huge" (in my eyes, but certainly not compared to what the neighbours produce) cucumber on the plant. I was so excited! I thought, "This gardening stuff is easier than I thought!" It didn't take long to realise however, that what was on that plant, really had nothing to do with me. I was just the fortunate one that got to taste the fruit of what God had grown Himself. Sure, I put the plant in the ground and tied it to the broom handle, but He sent the rain and He sent the sun and He protected it from the surrounding weeds.

This is much like ministry here in the "Vo", some will call it. We go out there each day, working as hard as we can, looking for opportunities to sneak "Jesus" into the conversations, to sneak prayer into people's lives, to tell testimonies of what God does, we till and till and pull weeds (trying to dispel the lies of the enemy), day in and day out, just to find more weeds growing up, around them thicker and plusher. Sometimes we see little blossoms, but they die out and more comes, but they don't produce fruit either. Then on that rare occasion, we run into the person who says, "Hey, is this where I can hear about Jesus?" and we get to enjoy the sweet flavour of leading them into personal relationship with the One they seek. And then we think, "Yay, that was easy!" But, we didn't do anything, God did. He did the growing, He did the weeding, He did the protecting, we just did the reaping!

So, do we stop tilling? Pulling weeds? Working the garden? NO! Out of about 15 tomato plants, I have 3 wee tomatoes growing, I have a few peppers now that are growing as well, and I was able to enjoy the first and only strawberry that grew on my strawberry plants. Because I have a loving God, who loves me and who loves the people of the "Vo", I know that there WILL be fruit, that the work will not be in vain and both He and I will get to dine together on the fruit of our labour.