Category: Suffering

The church is the hope of the world

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I’m thrilled to have a guest post from Danny Webster on my blog today. Danny is one of three bloggers currently in Cambodia visiting communities that are being transformed by local churches in partnership with Tearfund. Danny, Anita Mathias and Rich Wells are blogging about their daily experiences and interactions. To follow their journey you can also take a look here.

tilling ground

I’m in Cambodia with Tearfund to visit and write about a major project they support working in communities across this country. The work is done through the church, a vital part of how Tearfund work wherever in the world they are working, and seeing it in action has shown me why this matters and the difference it makes.

I spent last night in the pastor’s house in a community about an hour to the south of Phnom Penh. I watched the sun turn deep red as it dipped beneath the horizon leaving only a golden hue of fading light in its trail. And I saw the sun rise this morning, as it appeared through the morning haze – a late arrival to the bustle of activity already alive on the street. The cockerels started about 4, the dogs soon after, the neighbour got up and his music drifted effortlessly onto the balcony where we spent the night shielded with a mosquito net now littered with bugs. The pastor told us yesterday he got up around 4 most days; I struggled to believe it, but getting up at 6.30 having been awake the past two hours makes me a more wretched laggard than the sun.

The village I’m staying in, Tonle Batie, is one which supporters of Tearfund can stay in touch with through their See For Yourself initiative. You can see the highs and lows of their experiences, the successes and failures, the joy at crops growing, pigs getting pregnant and the sorrow of chickens falling prey to disease, taking a familiy’s livelihood in a single swoop.

The way Tearfund work in this village–  and many not just in Cambodia but across the world – is by mobilising the church, and in turn mobilising the community. It’s through a programme called umoja – based on a Swahili word meaning togetherness – that helps communities recognise the resources they already have and their own ability to respond to the problems in their community.

Yesterday Rich and I, who were spending the night in the village, sat down to pray with the pastor and a couple of workers for International Cooperation Cambodia (ICC), the local charity Tearfund partner with. Style is different, language is a barrier but the experience of praying with Christians across the world is always a privilege.

There is something about coming together that makes a difference. Whether it is Christians from different continents sharing meals and prayers, or members of a village coming together to improve their community’s livelihood. Earlier yesterday we helped the umoja group in Tonle Bati till the soil in a section of the church land ready for planting bell peppers today. There were men and women, young and old, English and Cambodian, working together on the soil. Admittedly, their hands were more used to the work and won’t be sporting the same blisters as mine this morning.

The church is vital, but it is not the extent of the work. These projects can never just be for the church; they start there, but they do not end there. Umoja is a long process, it is about finding and feeding a vision in the church to come together, to build relationships with the community, to find out what their family and neighbours needs are, and how they can respond to them.

We met a lady so involved in the work of the umoja group, and who was helping on the land yesterday, she didn’t realise she wasn’t formally part of the group. We met an elderly lady whose daughter is part of the group. Mostly house bound she’ll go into the forest when she can to collect wood, which she’ll bundle up and then offer for sale as firewood.

Together the community is helping itself, and in a selfless way, serving one another and supporting families when they go through times of need.

boy with chicken

I’ve been inspired while being out here, by the people and by the refusal to give into easy simplistic

chickens etc-jpegsolutions but commit to long-term sustainable development. I would love it if you could support Tearfund by giving £3 a month to help more communities be transformed, follow all of our blogs and find out how you can give at www.tearfund.org/bloggers.

My response to the Modern Slavery Bill

I was asked by Christian Today to write a reflection on yesterday’s Modern Slavery Bill. I was interested to learn of the coalition of anti-slavery organisations and the briefing paper that they published yesterday too. Daniel Webster of the Evangelical Alliance said this to me:

The Modern Slavery Bill is a big step from the government, it recognises this is a problem where they need to take action. But as it is, it’s not good enough, when parliament starts discussing the bill in the New Year there are areas where it needs to be strengthened. That we have slavery today should be something we’re embarrassed about, and the government must not dodge the difficult decisions, or think that simply passing a law will solve the problem.

Victims need to be placed at the very centre of the bill, the way they’re identified needs improving. It’s great the government plan on creating an Anti-Slavery Commissioner, but it needs the independence to criticise the government if they’re not doing enough.

I heartily agree with Daniel’s comments. To read my article, please click here.

How can this STILL be going on today?!

peoplepropertyLast night my husband and I finally sat down to have an evening off – it’s been a while! We had a film to watch that he had picked from Love Film. As it started, and many times throughout, we both wondered why he had picked it! He kept saying “I can’t watch this” – and I kept saying “We must”. The film – Flowers of War. What a heartbreaking, compelling, horrific movie telling of the horrors of what is known as ‘The Rape of Nanking’ (1937). During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japanese soldiers literally tore the Chinese city of Nanking apart, killing and brutalising everything in their path.

The film is based on a book that, in turn, is inspired by the diary of Minnie Vautrin. She was a US missionary in China who, along with the main character in the film, John Rabe, worked hard throughout the war to protect women. Just a quick look online allowed me to find some excerpts from Minnie’s diary:

“There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today. Thirty girls were taken from language school last night, and today I have heard scores of heartbreaking stories of girls who were taken from their homes last night—one of the girls was but 12 years old. Food, bedding and money have been taken from people. … I suspect every house in the city has been opened, again and yet again, and robbed. Tonight a truck passed in which there were eight or ten girls, and as it passed they called out “救命！救命！ Jiuming! Jiuming!”—save our lives. The occasional shots that we hear out on the hills, or on the street, make us realize the sad fate of some man—very probably not a soldier.”

The film made for extremely uncomfortable viewing, especially the parts where Japanese soldiers entered the so-called safe zone of a church to try to rape the young girls there. And when two women were brutally raped and murdered I must confess to almost being sick. Minnie herself commented on similar events that she witnessed firsthand:

“In my wrath, I wished I had the power to smite them for their dastardly work. How ashamed women of Japan would be if they knew these tales of horror.”

As my husband and I squirmed in our seats, wondering why we were continuing to watch, all I kept thinking was how cheap the lives of those women had become. They were totally expendable to the men who used then killed them. Yes it is often a sickening side effect of war, and yet such events are still going on today. Yes, in our so-called ‘civilised’, ‘peaceful’ Western societies day after day after day girls are taken, suddenly, against their will and forced into a life of slavery, servicing upwards of ten, twenty + men a day. This simply should not be happening! During this week, which includes EU Anti-Slavery Day on Friday, let’s make it our mission to find out more about the horrifying things that are going on on our doorstep – yes Europe is rife with human trafficking. Writing about the Jubilee+ Faith and Justice conference I attended earlier in the year, I quoted Gareth Davies of CARE, who informed us that: “trafficking is the second largest form of international crime – unlike drugs, people hold their value as they can be bought and sold many times.” How horrific is it to stop and think about the reality of what that means for those individuals trapped even today?

The problem may seem overwhelming and, indeed, one individual can do little to make a change. But together we CAN make a difference. There are some fantastic anti-trafficking organisations out there, such as Stop the Traffick and A21. The latter has a team of volunteers cycling 1250km through some of the main trafficking routes used in Europe – from Sofia, Bulgaria to London, England (and going through ten countries where the problem is most prevalent). Their Freedom Challenge is taking 11 days (ending October 16th) and, as their site says, has been undertaken to: “raise awareness both in countries where many young women and children are taken, as well as to raise $210,000 for The A21 Campaign shelters and victim assistance programs.”

albert

If you don’t know how the Freedom Challenge is going… find out! Support them as they come to the end of their huge undertaking. And look at these organisations’ websites to see if there is anything you can do to get involved and help. Really, in our society, in our lifetimes, HOW can this STILL be going on?

Injustice… and hope

These are two words I’ve been considering very closely over the last few days. I’m doing a lot of background reading on hope, as the next set of bible reading notes I’m writing are based on it. But I didn’t expect to be able to link it with the word injustice. However, both bible reading notes I’ve looked at today have spoken so clearly into my own personal situations that that is exactly what has happened. So I’m going to attempt to unpack some of the mass of thoughts going on in my head right now!

I hate injustice. It makes my blood boil to learn the terrifying facts about human trafficking, for instance, and I love the chances I get to write about charities and individuals really making a difference, raising awareness on that issue. I also can’t believe that in our own country, half a million people rely on Food Banks. I think they are fantastic – but so many people shouldn’t be in the state of poverty that forces them to need Food Banks in order to survive. Something is going horribly wrong in our society… I am also supporting the IF campaign – and think it is wonderful how many ‘known’ people have gotten behind it. Perhaps, just perhaps, governments will sit up and take notice – and make some changes.

But enough of the big issues. Each one of those merits a lot of discussion and action, but the injustice I’ve been feeling is far nearer to home. And, while it is a tad embarrassing to admit it, especially after all the things I’ve just listed, it is the injustices against me personally that I’ve been riled about this week. Do please be honest though, because I know I’m not alone in this – and don’t want to keep feeling as sheepish as I do writing this! You know what I mean, it’s the actions that other people choose to take, or the words they decide to say to you, that really affect your day. I’ve been struggling, deep down in my soul, after some words and actions others said and did on Monday. I’ve really been looking at what that says about me, and my responses to it all, but then there were some further actions done yesterday that have affected me too, and I realised this morning that I’ve allowed a large burden to settle on myself. I’ve had little rants about the injustice of it all – how unfair it is, how it affects me and makes my life a lot harder as I’m now exhausted. And, while that is all true, my bible readings this morning helped me take a step back and see how like a toddler I was behaving, stamping my foot and shouting ‘it’s not fair’. Because while it isn’t fair and there ARE people who need to think about what they do and say, they aren’t the ones who’ve allowed themselves to get twisted up inside about it all – that would be little old me. Even as I write this part of me is screaming that I’m the one with the thick, heavy head, a sore throat I can’t get rid of and a sadness that is making it hard to work. BUT, then I consider what I’ve read this morning:

The Lord is faithful in all he says;
he is gracious in all he does.
The Lord helps the fallen
and lifts up those bent beneath their loads. (Ps 145)

The example the bible notes gave alongside this psalm was of a former slave meeting a master who had beaten them in the past. When the master asked if the slave had been able to forgive them the slave said that they had left the past long behind, thanks to the God of love that they serve. Wow.

That hit me hard. My circumstances – and trials – seem quite ridiculous alongside something like that. And then the response section invited me to meditate on the unmerited goodness God has shown towards me – the way in which he has rescued me. And that’s where the link suddenly came flooding in. It is so obvious, but do you ever have those days when the ancient truths just hit you again in a totally fresh way? Powerful, oh so powerful. It doesn’t mean it will suddenly be easy to walk in the truth of it all, but that’s the tension we live in day by day isn’t it? But I’m running ahead of myself. Because it was the hope that hit me once again. Jesus Christ is the ultimate hope for us all and listen to how he lived his life, full of hope and expectation about what was coming:

Let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish. He was willing to die a shameful death on the cross because of the joy he knew would be his afterward… Think about all he endured when sinful people did such terrible things to him, so that you don’t become weary and give up. After all, you have not yet given your lives in your struggle against sin. (Hebrews 12)

Well scripture certainly socked it to me when I turned to that passage in Hebrews, as instructed to by the next set of bible reading notes! Later in that chapter it talks about discipline – and I know that part of the way we interact with one another and respond to people when they mistreat us is about developing our character. And listen to the promise that comes with the discipline:

God’s discipline is always right and good for us, because it means we will share in his holiness.

Amazing.

Talking of character, I was immediately taken back in my mind to the very well known passage in Romans 5:

…we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;  perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

I was going to share what focusing on hope these last few days has brought to mind for me personally too, but I think I’ll have to save that for my next post as this one is now rather epic! But, to finish, I do want to say that living as a pastor’s wife, and being a leader in various roles in the church etc does bring an added pressure to deal with difficulties, disappointments and sins quickly and efficiently. So I can feel like a real failure when I do struggle with something as petty as personal injustices. But God knew how I was feeling about that too, and encouraged me with the following lines, found at the end of my second daily reading today:

So take a new grip with your tired hands and stand firm on your shaky legs. Mark out a straight path for your feet. Then those who follow you, though they are weak and lame, will not stumble and fall but will become strong.

Another great promise to cling to 🙂

The ‘hidden’ cost

I had the great pleasure of attending the Jubilee Plus conference on Faith and Justice a couple of weekends ago. I haven’t posted about it before as I was busy writing entries for their site – you can see my thoughts here and here.

But one thing I definitely wanted to bring your attention to is a hard-hitting video about human trafficking, particularly poignant now in the light of the collapsed factory in Bangladesh. Click on the link here, watch – and respond. I know it’s been around for a little while – but this issue isn’t going away so we all need to take action!

We need God!

I have been away for a few days this week, enjoying time with family and watching with great joy as our kids played well with their cousins. Then I came home and catched up on news stories. Before we went away we heard the news of Margaret Thatcher’s death – and the really sad news of Rick Warren’s son’s death. I cannot believe the torrent of filth and hate that has emerged on social networking sites, particularly twitter, about both. I was aghast by how much of it came from Christians…

Since we’ve come home I’ve read and watched stories about the horrific rapes in Syria and the disgusting murders of babies carried out by Dr Gosnell. My stomach flips, my heart sinks and an overriding sense of sickness pervades my body as I think about what humanity is capable of – in terms of practical acts, but also through vitriolic outbursts. I don’t really feel like commenting on the specifics of any of the above. So many others have done that eloquently already. All I want to say is we need God – so so badly! I hope and pray that hearing such news brings all Christians to their knees. I am sure that is the case with the most recent news stories, but unfortunately it appears there is so much hate within the Church itself. Our society – locally but also worldwide – is in dire need of its Father. It doesn’t need to see his people divided, lashing out at one another. We need to look at ourselves humbly once again – after all who are we to ever cast the first stone? We also need to come before our God, united, to cry out for his salvation for the world.

We need you God!

Taking stock on International Women’s Day

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I am currently editing a fantastic book that seeks to empower women by freeing them from the chains of needing to seek affirmation constantly and looking for the answer to the question Am I Beautiful? It reminds us that as women made in the image of Beauty itself, we are all indeed beautiful, so we need to learn to rise above all the pressures – self- and society- and culture-applied – to accept that. And it also urges us to remember that there are far too many bigger issues, far too many pressing needs, for us to simply be preoccupied with ourselves. We need to be able to move on and make a difference, to be the world changers that women significantly seem to be. The brilliant author, Chine Mbubaegbu, cites some UN statistics:

‘There are 900 million women and girls facing extreme poverty. Women own just one per cent of the world’s wealth, we earn just 10 per cent of the world’s income and half a billion of us can’t read or write.’ And yet, it is being recognised around the world by governments and development agencies that women certainly make a huge difference when given the chance. That, while we earn less than men generally, when we do work we reinvest 90 per cent of it into the health, nutrition and educational needs of our families – as opposed to the 30–40 per cent of men that do so.

Chine’s citation of such facts and figures whetted my appetite so I went in search of more on the UN website. And found some other interesting ones:

  • Over the years women have begun to enter various traditionally male-dominated occupations, but are still rarely employed in jobs with status, power and authority or in traditionally male blue-collar occupations.
  • Women are still under-represented among legislators, senior officials and managers, craft and related trade workers and plant and machine operators and assemblers.
  • Specifically, women are still under-represented in national parliaments, where on average only 17 per cent of seats are occupied by women.
  • There is a persistent gender pay gap everywhere – while it has begun to close slowly in some countries it is still unchanged in others.
  • Despite all these changes, women still continue to bear most of the responsibilities around the home: caring for children and other dependents, preparing meals and doing other housework. Around the world, women spend twice as much time – at least – as men on unpaid domestic work.

While all of these facts start to get me riled, it is the information about violence against women that angers me the most. This is a UNIVERSAL phenomenon – not just occurring in so-called under-developed nations but right under our noses here in the West too. Our ‘developed’ nations can hide some horrific secrets under the surface. Charities such as A21 have done a great job in raising our awareness of such issues as human trafficking but there is so much more that can – and should – be done.

I was horrified to read the following in the UN stats report The World’s Women 2010: ‘In many regions of the world, longstanding customs put considerable pressure on women to accept being beaten by their husbands, even for trivial reasons. Whether for burning the food, venturing outside without their husband, neglecting children or arguing with their husband, in quite a few countries a very high percentage of women consider such behaviour sufficient grounds for being physically hit.’

Wake up women – and men – around the world! We are worth so much more. No one – absolutely no one – deserves to be treated with less respect than another. I hope on today, of all days, we can celebrate all that is good about womanhood and determine afresh to fight against the injustices that so many of our sisters in countries all around the world are facing right now.

Dying from hunger in a world of more than enough

Last week saw the launch of the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, which is something that I hope as many of us as possible from the Church will get involved in. I asked Chine Mbubaegbu, who was at the event, to write a guest post…

Photo by Tim Whitby/Getty Images ForIF, © 2013 Getty Images

Photo by Tim Whitby/Getty Images For
IF, © 2013 Getty Images

I was sure I had misheard.

Standing on stage in front of hundreds gathered at Somerset House last Wednesday evening, Love Actually star Bill Nighy said that two million children die a year because they don’t have enough food to eat.

Two million?

My mind couldn’t quite comprehend the figure.

Did he say two million?

That’s two million beautiful children who never grow up. Two million children whose short lives are made up of days filled with pangs of hunger. Two million children. Every year.

They die because they don’t have that most basic of human needs: food. And it’s not just children. Men and women are also literally dying of hunger.

But it’s not like there’s not enough food to go round. The Western world wastes so much food. The amount of food I must throw away would be enough to keep people alive. Which makes these statistics seem even more sickening.

We all remember being guilt tripped by our parents when we didn’t clear our plates as children. “Think about the poor children in Africa.”

And I recall thinking that me refusing to eat the peas (still, yuck) on my plate would have little impact on the “poor children”, so I’d rather not eat them thank you very much. It seemed like we couldn’t do anything about it anyway.

But now, the launch of the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, says that we can. The campaign is thought to be the biggest of its kind, with more than 100 development agencies and faith groups coming together to campaign for action on global hunger.

It challenges the prime minister to tackle four big IFs to help there to be enough food for everyone:

  • IF we stop poor farmers being forced off their land, and use the available agricultural land to grow food for people, not biofuels for cars.
  • IF governments keep their promises on aid, invest to stop children dying from malnutrition and help the poorest people feed themselves through investment in small farmers.
  • IF governments close loopholes to stop big companies dodging tax in poor countries, so that millions of people can free themselves from hunger.
  • IF we force governments and investors to be honest and open about the deals they make in the poorest countries that stop people getting enough food.

One by one, celebrities from all over the world (One Direction, Bill Gates, David Harewood and Edith off of Downton Abbey) took to the stage or appeared as if by magic on the video projection at Somerset House; each pleading with us to support the campaign.

Everyone loves a celebrity spot. And in the world we live in, getting celebrities on board means people will listen, you’ll get lots of media attention and probably more support for your campaign. It’s a shame the “two million children dying a year” statistic wasn’t enough to wake the world up to this injustice. It was enough for me.

Chine profileChine Mbubaegbu is Editor at the Evangelical Alliance,
including idea magazine and threads (voted best Christian blog at the Christian New Media Awards).

What a week under par has taught me

This has been a very strange week for me. It all started with my daughter coming down with a very violent sickness bug that has been going round her school. She was up a lot one night being sick, spent the next day very listless but then bounced back. Then my husband and I both went down with it the same night – all night. The next day we were laid out completely, having to call on friends to do our two different school runs. But then he bounced back…and I didn’t. It’s taken me all week to be able to eat a full meal – and I’m still not eating plenty of items as the thought of them makes me feel super sick. I still feel slightly nauseous constantly.

I’ve had to force myself to eat to ensure I’m well enough to look after my kids – and earlier in the week we had the struggle of both kids playing up because our routine was disrupted due to our sickness. Just when we asked them if they could be extra helpful and good they did precisely the opposite – and we both felt too ill to deal with it. To be honest, I’ve been pretty short-fused with them all week. It’s just plain hard work to get on and do all the normal things a parent has to while I feel like this.

But I can also see that this week has done me a lot of good. Just slowing down so I only do the bare necessities has actually made me realise what a lot of rushing about I do – and made me wonder whether I need to do absolutely all of it. I’ve been really challenged recently about the fact that I feel I have my finger in so many pies, how many of them am I actually doing to the best of my ability? And what room is there in my life for those people that really need me to down tools and help them at a moment’s notice?

It has also given me a renewed admiration for people who cope with illness long-term. That is a subject on my heart at the moment, and I’m hoping to write about it soon. How do people who suffer with something day in day out keep their head above water, keep believing and trusting in God’s promises? People like my mum, who struggles with some horrible illnesses and has been suffering from terrible nausea for months and months that no expert seems to be able to get to the bottom of despite countless tests. I was talking on the phone to her after she had been away for a few days with my dad. I was saying how I’d been feeling and what a struggle it had been, and then she told me how she had had to come face to face with her limitations yet again while away. How hard that must be when you are on holiday, as you can’t ever take a holiday from your sickness…

This week has also made me grateful at times. When I first started feeling well enough to eat again I was grateful; when I first felt able to drive again too. When I felt well enough to tidy up a bit I was glad – as the state of the house was getting me down. And the sense of achievement of getting the bits of work done I needed to this week was much more intense than usual – because I’d had to battle through more than normal too. While I did struggle with resentment at times about some of the things I had to carry on and do even though I didn’t feel up to them, it has actually been really nice to hide away and spend most evenings at home on my own or with my husband just doing very little. I think we all need regular periods of time like that – perhaps my next one was so long overdue that God allowed this sickness to really knock me out so that I actually did slow down for a change!

I wonder whether your week has been ‘the same as usual’ or if you can look back and see something you’ve learned afresh. Do you regularly take the time to take stock and think about what your days have been filled with, and what God may have been trying to teach you through your everyday circumstances? I think I look for such things more regularly now that I am writing, but it is certainly a beneficial habit for us all to cultivate…

Is the tide turning?

Like everyone I have been sickened by the events that have been occurring in our country over the last 4 nights. I have refrained from blogging about it for a few reasons – firstly I am at home without my kids in order to concentrate on a large pile of editing work and have been distracted enough by the constant tweets and news reports. I also didn’t want to shoot off a response without having time to really process everything. But having a regular blog means that I do feel I need to put some thoughts down here.

Firstly, I have been ashamed to see the images being shown across the world revealing the state of our nation. I have also been heartbroken watching people lose homes and livelihoods. I’ve also felt pain when taking a step back and trying to look through God’s eyes. As a nation we have seemed so self-sufficient, and had no room for Him. But now people are looking for answers. And yes now I think the tide is turning and the time has come for the church to rise up. We have watched prophecies come true in regard to the financial crash. God has prepared us for these dark days and wants us to be his hands and feet on the ground. What wonderful images seeing everyone out with their brooms tidying up, being community together. And yet the problems in our society will not be so easily cleaned up or swept away. Those who have lost in this wanton destruction will need help far beyond the next few days. I was pained to read on the BBC website that twitters #prayforlondon was being viewed as an ’empty gesture’ while #riotcleanup seen as ‘positive social mobilisation’. We need both! Church we must stand up and be counted in these days! We are here for such a time as this and need to grab all the opportunities that come to us in the coming days. WE are those with the good news – the offer of future hope. Let’s make sure we don’t keep it to ourselves…