BOX-SHATTERING SPIRIT

God will not be joining me in the slums. I will not be pulling God and his transformative Spirit with me like a doctor’s kit. I don’t own God and certainly don’t plan to peddle him door to door as if I can distribute his Spirit in even quantities.

On the contrary, God owns me. He possesses me. His radical, countercultural and foolish ways have made my jaw drop and he’s gotten hold of my heart, mind and feet despite my constant selfishness. With his hands clenching my heart and continually reshaping it for his purposes, he is reforming it in a way that is drawing me where he so pleases. God is pulling me to the slums and he’s already at work there as well.

Here’s where the mystery of God both baffles and inspires me.

Through your prayers and mine, God is at work in the lives of my future neighbors. And even without our prayers, I can’t help but believe that God is working there already.

He’s created each person in each slum in every city and country. These people possess his image and fingerprints. They are often religious and spiritual people, seeking a higher being in whatever way they know how. They demonstrate unified community, hospitality and contentment with whatever their gods have allotted for them.

God is huge and mysterious beyond our ability to comprehend. Enfleshed as the man called Jesus, however, he stooped down into human life and culture, embraced it, and yet countered the culture where his kingdom ways were stifled. His Spirit remains at work today.

If we put a wind, no matter how powerful, into a box, the flow of air will hit the confines of the box and cease to move. Similarly, if we expect to understand God in his fullness we box him up and leave no room for his big, mysterious, box-shattering ways. Instead of incarcerating God’s Spirit, I want to make room for it. I think many of us wish to empty ourselves so that we are so light and moldable that God’s Spirit picks us up and sweeps us into his powerful work. God is already at work in the slums and he invites us to join him.

I know that God has been drawing many of us to himself and to the places where he is at work. My understanding is that God’s Spirit is at work in the slum where I’ll move.

I expect God to use me there, but I also expect him to use my neighbors to minister to me and to change me as they too experience God's Spirit.

I will be reminded that I am but a tiny broken tile in the grand scheme of God’s creative and beautiful mosaic plan.