Cookies, Creatures, and Catastrophes
Every team retreat, we each bring a snack. Cookies seem to be a fairly popular retreat
snack food, so I often make chocolate peanut butter no-bake cookies for my
contribution. Tonight I found myself
making cookies for our retreat this weekend.
This time, the cookie making didn’t go as well as
before. I didn’t have the time to go to
the nice grocery store, so I didn’t get the highest quality of ingredients,
plus the proportions of peanut butter to chocolate were off. So I tried again, this time just making
peanut butter no-bakes, and they got hard too quickly. Two completed batches of cookies, two hardly
edible batches of cookies. But the
cookie catastrophe is not the important part of this story.
As I was cleaning up my mess of ingredients on the floor and
countertop, I came across two ants.
Here, it is almost impossible to go three steps without running into a
group of ants, so I swept them up with the cookie crumbs and planned to throw
them in the garbage. When I opened up my
cloth though, the ants were still alive, so I proceeded to let them live and
put them back on the floor. Thinking
nothing of these two ants, as there are probably hundreds in my kitchen alone,
I went back to cleaning. As I was just
about finished, though, something about one of the ants caught my eye, so I
bent down to look at this creature. I
could see his mouth, and he was eating a piece of cookie crumb that I left on
the floor. Not knowing how ants actually
consume food, I watched him for a little bit.
After eating, he went to cleaning his face, and then stood up to reach
to cookie crumb again. This process
continued for a few minutes, and then he ran off into other areas of my
apartment.
As I looked back on this situation, I saw how similar I was
to that ant. I like cookies, so does
he. I shower, so does he. More significantly, I am a beautiful creation
of God and so is he. But, there were
also a few striking differences between us.
I am thousands of times bigger and more powerful than him. I controlled his fate, and I chose to let him
live. He was completely at the mercy of
my decisions; he had no say. Only after
I allowed him a place in my life did I see the incredible beauty of his one,
small, seemingly insignificant life.
And then I looked at what is going on in our world right
now. There are so many people who need
help: the refugees, the injured, the fatherless, the oppressed, the victims,
the captives, and the captors. So many
people are in the situation of the ant, unable to help themselves, relying on
help from others to ensure their survival.
These people come from terrible situations, and yet the only find hope
from limited groups of people. Other
groups push them away, saying “You look too much like them,” or “How can we
trust you when you’re from THAT country?”
The saddest part of this reality is that these people are people too:
created in the image of God, given inherent worth by Jesus’ blood, and able to
impact the world in a positive way, if they only had that chance. There is no reason they should be
discriminated against because of their skin color or ethnicity; Paul commands
us in Galatians that “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free,
nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians
3:28).” It breaks my heart to see
people, just like you and me, who are being denied basic human rights because
of situations out of their control. This
problem needs fixed.
I am not here to start a political conversation. I understand that each situation in today’s
world involves risks, and sometimes leaders believe the risks are not worth the
rewards. I am just here to bring Jesus
into the conversation. Jesus shed his
blood to save every person on the earth: all religions, all cultures, all
people groups, and all areas of the world.
He gave his life, his ultimate sacrifice, to show love to all
people. If Jesus gave all he had,
without discrimination, shouldn’t we do the same thing?
Living in a Muslim country this year has given me a greater
impression of their religion and culture.
These people are some of the friendliest people I have ever met. They enjoy talking, hanging out, playing
soccer and guitar, and just being in community together. Not all people of this faith are involved in
the negative situations in the news; in fact, that percentage is a very
miniscule fraction of the total population.
It breaks my heart to see friends posting ideas that stereotype all
followers of this religion into one category; this simply isn’t true.
As an American living in a foreign country, I urge you to be
Jesus to the people you interact with each day.
The world doesn’t need more people to judge; the world needs people to
love. Most importantly, the world needs
Jesus, and who is better to be that example than you?
The answer to the world’s problems is not more
violence. The answer is Jesus.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mohandas Gandhi
Luke Forshey
November 20, 2015
Very well said!
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