Our World

One of the things that I really enjoy about living outside of the U.S. is the experience in general. I'm not talking about the oppressive things that I often joke about on here. I'm talking about the things that you would likely never realize if you don't travel. Last week I was sitting in a meeting and events put words to the thing I had been feeling for months. I realized that one of the difficulties and beauties of living in Bangladesh is that we understand things in different ways. I think we sometimes take the foundations of our understanding for granted. Actually, we probably almost always take the foundations of our understanding for granted. The environment in which you grow up drastically affects how you perceive the world around you. If you grow up in a hut on the edge of the desert in Botswana, the spiders in your house are no big deal but rain is a huge deal. If you grow up in the rigid school structure and hierarchical system of Bangladesh, patiently waiting for things to occur is not a big deal but abstract processing is a challenge. If you grow up in the wealth and prosperity of the U.S., giving is not a challenge but sacrificing is.

That last one is something I'm learning from a situation with some Bengali Christians I am currently dealing with. The wife is working as a cook/househelper, the husband is a blind guy who has a dream of running a center for the disabled. They have a faith that says that they can trust that the Lord will provide. I have a faith that says the Lord will provide but we also need to be good stewards of what God provides. They keep asking me for money. I keep telling them to be good stewards and telling them that I'm poor too. When I really think about it though, I'm not really poor. I'm just bad at sacrificing my ingrained american desires so that I might share. I rejoice though because I wouldn't be challenging myself like this if I didn't take a step away from home. I don't think we see ourselves as clearly in a mirror as we do in the eyes of someone different than us. If you look closely enough, that reflection in their eyes just may shake your foundations and from this, stronger ones may arrive.