And it feels like heaven.
The power is on, the toilets are nice, Jen lives in a mansion, the buildings are colorful, the weather is perfect, the sky is blue...and we've only been here 9 hours.
Of course, if we would have come here before Ethiopia things would have appeared much differently, and we would be complaining about the crowds, the dust, the food etc... but now it just seems really nice.
We spent the last few days where Kristen lives in a small town called Finote Selam, about 8 hours northwest of Addis Ababa. Finote Selam is located in what Kristen calls the "Bible belt" of Ethiopia; think Rogers, Arkansas (except that the Finote has taxis). The Finote was great. After our romps through Lalibela and Gondar and our visit to see the hippos in the Nile (yes, large teeth, loud grunting, scared Ethiopians who can't swim. It was awesome), Finote Selam was a perfect place to unwind and also learn more about what Kristen's been up to with the Peace Corps in this country that seems more different from ours than similar.
Kristen's (who hasn't endorsed anything I'm saying exactly) position in the Finote has removed her from close Christian community, from electricity, from clean water, from comfort, from Western bathroom practices, and from almost all other luxuries you and I take for granted every moment. This isn't to set her or other similar volunteers up on a pedestal of heroism; surely most of them have come to learn more than teach, to be changed more than to change. But what if Kristen's giving of her life for these two years in as complete a way as can be conceived actually does affect change in Finote Selam? What if the mill she's helping to start makes access to grinding grain easier and more affordable for the poorest in the city? What if the laundry business she helped set up that provides jobs for women with HIV turns their lives around and sets them on a different course?
Even if she revolutionizes life here, that's just one small dot on a map of a very big country in a very very big continent in a very very very big world. So someone gives her whole life, gives everything she has to hope to God that something comes of it. And when it does, it barely scratches the surface of the surface of the problems that she sees around her, the problems that pervade the globe.
Sometimes I wish it could be equal, that an entire life devoted to help or service would yield an equal reaction of benefit. But it's not that way; sometimes we work without seeing change. We try to sacrifice and don't enjoy seeing any fruit at all. And the problem is that our sacrifice itself can't work the kinds of change we hope to see. We're too small. There is, though, a sacrifice that is yielding its equal reaction in the world, and that sacrifice is Christ, who gave up immensely more than we have to do immensely more than we can see. Our little lives here, to affect lasting change, to see real renewal on earth, must flow out of this one ultimate sacrifice whose giving of himself is enough to waken us all from our slumber and plant our little seeds of service into soil fertile enough to see them grow.
well said.
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