How Do I Defend An Orphan?

February 11, 2013March 4, 2013 / Erin Kirk / 7 Comments

Before the industrial revolution, the average income per person in the wealthiest nations was only about four times higher than that of the poorest nations. Today, the average American lives on $90+ per day and 2.6 billion people, 40% of the world, live on less than $2.

That data came from When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself, which I’m reading because I have the chance to go to Zambia this summer, and I’m scared of my very white, very rich, very good intentions.

But I’m more scared of doing nothing.

Right now in Chongwe, Zambia there are four women and one man running a school/orphanage in the bush, with jacked up plumbing and 100 variously malnourished kids – and they do it for free. Tim and Holly from Scrubs Medical Mission came to cowboy church looking for a few contractors, plumbers and farmers to go help. I’ll go in a heartbeat, but I’m learning to ask God about these things before running out for typhoid shots.

Here’s what the Bible says about orphans:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress. James 1:27

Learn to do good; seek justice, reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Isaiah 1:17

Whoever receives a child in My name, receives Me. Matthew 18:5

If anyone has material possession and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? IJohn 3:17

If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday. Isaiah 58:10

Authors Steve Corbett and Dr. Brian Fikkert put it this way: “If God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments were to have a concern for the poor during eras of relative economic equality, what are we to conclude about God’s desire for the North American church today?”

But we have to be smart because we know development solutions formulated in a rectory in Cleveland, don’t always translate in Africa, but that hardly relieves us from the duty. The God I say I believe commands me take care of the widow, the poor, the immigrant and the orphan, just like he commanded the Nation of Israel. They failed at it too.

Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves, do what it says. James 1:22

So I’m praying and surrendering my assumptions and educating myself about these exact people, in this exact location, so I don’t hurt them with my ignorance. God knows I’m ignorant, obese with blessing and unequal to the task, but he also knows I can build simple irrigation systems in arid places.

Maybe I can help.

I don’t know if I’m going yet. I’ll keep you posted.

Barefoot, Traveling, Hippie Freak.

February 6, 2013February 6, 2013 / Erin Kirk / 5 Comments

Nearly 15 years ago, I wrote a slew of emails from South America, Central America and Asia. For some reason, my mom printed and saved them. I just found them yesterday and they remind me what a fearless, wild-ass, hippie freak I used to be.

It was nearly 2000. Bill Clinton was still president and September 11th was just another fall day. Y2K was scheduled to end the world but if it had, I wouldn’t have known because I was deep in Bolivia’s Amazon Basin, sleeping in a sweaty tent with bug bites covering my body like chickenpox. My then-boyfriend and I had hiked a Pre-Incan trade route, paved with large, now-slippery stones all the way from the mountains to the Rio Beni. Here’s what I had to say about that:

And because we just hadn’t had enough, we decided to hit the jungle for another four days in Rurrenabaque. We had a delightful guide and saw a few crazy jungle creatures as we were floating down the river on a handmade balsa wood raft, ala Huck Finn…Our guide, Victor Hugo, who was born and raised deep in the jungle, told us he has seen the jaguars hypnotize monkeys in the trees, causing them to fall out and become prey. He and his brothers have trapped jaguars because when you live in the jungle they are higher on the food chain than humans. They routinely drag children off.

Belize

Later, we dropped into Central America and earned dive certificates in Honduras. On a tiny caye off the coast of Belize we snorkeled for hours with Blue Tang, Barracuda and Anchovy in warm, turquoise water with pink coral forests. Here’s what I said about that:

Morris Caye is so small it doesn’t even appear named on maps. It’s maybe 300 yards by 150 yards. We slept in a cabana that had seven windows, all of which had views of the Caribbean Sea. We spent our days drinking rum, snorkeling in the coral reefs and fishing from a tiny, leaky, dugout boat.

And one of my personal favorites came from the Himalayas in the Fall of 2000.

Nepal.

“Nepalis are thrilled to see America joining the ranks of the third world in terms of election shenanigans. “Election…America….like Nepal…ha ha ha.” You think you are confused trying to work it out? Try at 16,000 feet in a third world country. Just finished a three-week, 150km trek through the very beautiful Annapurna region of Nepal. We crossed a 17,700 foot pass and are now safely down again. Happily we arrived in Pokhara for the beginning of a nine-day paragliding course (the kind where you jump off hills and mountains with a parachute). We took the first class today and will fly tomorrow. Needless to say, that has us pretty excited.”

I included pictures here because even I feel like I’m making this up. But that little adventurer with the tan feet, strong calves and sand in her hair, is still bouncing around in me. She’s why I believe in micro-finance, education for girls and counter-trafficking efforts. She’s why I’m a feminist and a pacifist and why I just can’t see things in black and white.

But the difference between then and now is I’m no longer the center, the engine of what I do.

Right now, I feel like a rusty 57 Chevy that is slowly being dismantled and restored. It’s painful to feel the really damaged bits torn away and replaced, but it’s worth it because at the heart of the car is a brand new, after-market engine. It’s got a lot more horses and technology I don’t even understand. It’s the same car with the same character, it’s just being cleaned up from the inside out.

So all this makes me wonder, if my steps are ordered by the Lord, as I have chosen to believe they are, surely he ordered them through places like New Delhi and Jakarta and Patagonia.

Why? What was all that for?

It’s an exciting question.

Struggles with Loneliness.

January 31, 2013 / Erin Kirk / 8 Comments

Lying in bed with the flu this week, I was reminded that I am a lonely girl. That may be news to some of you who know me because I’m fairly gregarious, but two moves in four years to opposite sides of Texas has exposed a familiar condition.

I do a lot of stuff alone, always have. There are consequences.

Thank God for Sam. As he loaded up my sick-bed with books, kleenex, Emergen-C and soup, I wondered out loud, if he weren’t there, who would I call to help me?

“Of course, there are people I could call,” I said.

“Yah but you wouldn’t,” he replied.

He’s right. I’m an independent girl and I occasionally overuse it, maybe to hide some native shyness. Sometimes it’s easier to be separate and aloof, but the perils of that approach come into sharp focus when you’re lying in bed with nothing to do but ache.

Though my bible sat next to me on my bed, I just was too sick and cranky to read it. It felt like a chore, so I did easier things. I watched Sex In the City reruns. I read Vanity Fair’s comedy issue. I painted my toenails and finished a novel that was mostly a trashy waste of time.

Here were the mental results of that approach:

“Damn, I need to move to a big city, develop a snazzy writing career and find girlfriends who are perennially available for cocktails, maybe then I’d quit being lonely and scared that my life is meaningless. But what if Sartre is right, and I’m looking for meaning where there is none and making a fool of myself to the secular world by writing about it?”

Yikes. Can you believe I think things like that, and then say them out loud? Me either.

This morning, still feeling sorry, I tried a different approach. I went into my office, shut the door and waited for the God I say I believe, to weigh in. I know from experience that praying over my fears can lift the fog and yet, I still look to Sex in the City first.

So I sat in virasana – a yoga pose that looks a lot like kneeling, and said, “God Help. I’m lonely”.

“You know, I will never leave you nor forsake you. That I’m always with you until the end of the age. I know every hair on your head and your steps are ordered by Me.”

Did I “hear” God saying that?

Well, those are scriptures, four to be exact, pertinent to my concerns, that I have read dozens of times, and they whistled to mind like bottle rockets. So is that God talking? I think so, and as if to back it up, I felt my heart steady and peace begin to fill my body. It’s hard to describe but it’s the kind of feeling I imagine hens have when they finally settle down in their nests.

Why didn’t I do that yesterday?

Photo credit: enor

What is the point of suffering the irrational leaps required to believe in an unseen God, if it doesn’t help you manage your daily life? My traditional methods of dealing with loneliness – eating junior mints, reading magazines and watching silly tv – didn’t work. Praying did.

Those are the broad and narrow paths between which I constantly choose. I write about stumbling around because, unlike a some Christians, I’m short on certainty and I only want to serve you what I’ve eaten myself.

I know following Jesus makes no rational sense and today it’s one of the least fashionable choices one can make, but when I do it with heart, I feel whole and calm. Maybe even ready to go join the quilting club.

I offer this experience for your consideration.