My good friend and long-time colleague Greg Rake works with the poor in India. He and his wife, Ines, are good models of the "life-long journey" of faith and service. I asked Greg to write a reflection for Lent from his perspective in India. Here are his words of wisdom which I commend to your reading.
Advent and Lent
have always been my favorite times in the liturgical calendar. Both have usually included some ritual such
as the advent wreath and special Lenten services. Over the years, Lent has also included an
opportunity for “giving up something” to help us in discipline, denial and the hope
of adding something to our lives. It
also provides additional time to consider what else we could do to follow
Jesus.
My recent years
have been spent living and working in India.
This wasn’t a career path that we chose; our commitment was to living
and working out our faith where God calls us.
In this case, it was something we never would have planned for or dreamed
of doing. After working for almost 40
years in Latin America, I was wondering what surprises this new adventure would
bring to our faith and commitment to living out the gospel.
Like Latin
America, where faith is openly discussed and shared, I found this same openness
was also true here in India. Here there is an open and candid interest in
different expressions of faith that is often absent in the US context. Landesa, the organization with which I work,
is not a faith-based organization, but its vision is to seek structural changes
with regard to land and find ways to provide secure access to land for the poor,
especially women. This vision is clearly aligned with Christian values and what
I have come to learn and appreciate from my colleagues and other Indians is that these values also align with
their various faith traditions and practices.
Many years ago
in my early experiences living and working in cross cultural situations, rather
than focusing on the differences and the things I couldn’t understand I tried
to identify all the things I found to be in common. Soon I realized that the differences were less
important and the similarities helped me bridge the gaps. I also see that Jesus does this time and
again by recognizing who the person is and what’s important to that person.
Then he asks questions and engages the whole person. I have tried to follow that principle in
India including in the practice of my own faith. I have found many commonalities; even within
the millions of depictions of God within the Hindu faith I find that many of
the characteristics of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are present. I am not denying the differences, and I try
to focus on the question of where is God in all of this? And I have found that God’s presence is
everywhere.
Many times I
have walked into the offices of government officials to find pictures of Jesus
or Mother Teresa on their walls. Indeed,
I often have colleagues tell me that they are praying for others and for me.
One sent me this inspirational quote:
God
wants us to live like the grass even if its stepped, crushed, burned and cut;
it always persists and grows back even greener and stronger.
She sent this after we had recently visited a community where single,
abandoned and widowed women were invisible and the project we were piloting was
working on a way that would identify them and, wherever
possible, provide a small piece of land for a homestead that would provide
these women security, safety, nutrition, and identity.
Over the course of the past few years, I have received text messages from
staff who have been in the field for several days, and they are on an overnight
train to be able to be present at an important meeting the next day. They call me on the weekends to share with me
the “good news” that so many families just had received title to land. Like most development work, this is not a 9 –
5 job and I find myself wondering about what motivates them. In my
conversations it often becomes clear that they are motivated by their
commitment and love for people and when further pressed, they understand that
this is what God expects.
Their examples and the above quote provide me with a Lenten picture that
comes through the Christian scriptures and the Lenten story – Jesus served and
suffered, and His resurrection brings new life; his promise and charge to the
disciples is that they would do even great things.
This is the Lenten charge and example from my colleagues to me – how can
I be used up like Jesus; how can I deny myself, so that in that service, in me,
God grows back ‘greener and stronger’?
So I pose this question. Is there something through service during Lent
that can help you (and me) live out this service throughout the year?
Gregory Rake
Lent, 2013
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