The Commonality of Man

Greetings from Uganda dear friends and family!  Chris and I send you our love!

As you can imagine, many humorous things have happened since I last wrote, but I am going to save those for another time and write about something we have been learning.

Let me begin by asking you a question. Have you had your heart challenged in some way or another during your lifetime? Many of you might be thinking to yourself, yes, many times. Life does that to us, exhausts emotionally and makes us question the world, our place in it, and leaves us often asking the questions that begin with the word why.

Being across the globe, away from all that we know in every way, such as language, weather, food, housing, showers, toilets, family, etc. has displayed to us the differences between us and Africa. But what has also been displayed is how we are not so different at all in the ways that make us human.  Let me explain.

Just like at home, we’ve seen Africans grieve over the loss of a child. We’ve seen their children throw tantrums. We’ve been rejected by some of the teenagers. We’ve rejoiced over and with a woman here as her baby bump has grown month after month. We’ve seen people sick and their faithful attempts to trust God as they hope for healing. We’ve celebrated birthdays and sang horrible renditions of the birthday song and seen their faces filled with the same mixture of embarrassment and joy that we have. 

They’ve comforted us, cried with us, laughed so hard we can’t breathe with us, they’ve baked for us, and challenged us.

Despite the vast differences of our cultures, one thing we have come to believe is that our struggles, our pains, our joys and our hopes, they are the same at the heart level.  

Adjusting and adapting to living in another culture has been hard and understanding the people can be a challenge at times, but I never have to ask my heart what to do when I see someone crying, or laughing, or being playful. My heart doesn’t wonder to itself, hmm…what do their tears mean, why are they giggling like that, what does this child want that is holding its arms up towards me. This language, the language of our hearts, it is the same and something we can all understand.

Despite all this, it is amazing how culture, worldviews, money, education, have cultivated a way of categorizing each other. We define ourselves by our differences and yet somehow long for a common ground where we can understand each other. Yet, dangerously, in that longing to understand, we require change and conformity to our comforts and our sense of safety and control. Every culture does this. Every person does it in some way in their own lives. It happens within countries, states, cities, and even families. It is something common to man.

The incredible thing is that rich or poor, educated or uneducated, healthy or unhealthy,(the list is endless) we all  feel pain, long for joy, desire love and acceptance, and want to know that we have a purpose, that we are not an accident or a mistake and that our life means something. We all have a heart cry that screams for something to answer our questions, validate our lives, and might I dare say define what it is that we should fight for that is deep and meaningful and most of all true.

Think about it, although environments, economies, languages, etc. differ between us, none of those define our humanity or our heart longings. These things make me wonder even more how so many believe that we are an accident of environment.  Does your heart at the depth of its longing really want to just be cells or microbes or whatever that happened to hit at the right time in the right environment to make us, the human race? Do you like to be categorized that generally? It is the easier path to believe and depend on, no doubt, but is it the right one?   

What I have been thinking about most is that we, in our own attempts to define ourselves and each other, have lost our sense of wonder, of awe at the uniqueness and beauty of mankind. Just as the world has asked you to consider and believe in its idea of truth, I am challenging you to consider another idea.

What if instead of longing for your life to mean something, striving to make it so, and just chalking pain and suffering up to “that is how life is” and happiness is something I’ll grasp at when I can, that there was something more to your life? Dream with me for a minute.

What if your longing for joy, your desire for love and acceptance, and your search for purpose is not an accident or a mistake and that your life truly does means something?  

Think of how our hearts rise in our chests when we watch an amazing movie where people fight for truth and each other, where love is true and deep and sacrificial, and in spite of pain and suffering and loss there is an ending where we find hope.  Just like in the movies, to be a part of a great and inspirational story would be worth all that we have gone through. The hopes fulfilled and lost, the exhausting emotions of our strained hearts and the pain we endure would pass away in the face of our great victory and good ending.

However, our world, our human condition, lends itself to the abuse of the sacred and the beautiful because the sacred and the beautiful are in their very nature indefinable.  As we search for ways to define ourselves, we strangle the beauty of our purpose. What if our purpose is not to point to ourselves and what defines us one from another, but to point to something that in our commonness reveals the deep and beautiful script of a greater story in which we each play a part?

I will leave you with this.

What if we chose to embrace the sacred and its beauty because we see that in that there is a definition to cling to that goes beyond culture or any other difference? What if we chose to allow truth to define us rather than try to live within our own personal and selfish definitions of truth?

We have done a great disservice to the story of God by trying to get people to believe in Christ only for their own benefit because in that we have pointed them inward to themselves. By doing this we have created believers who end up serving a God they believe should serve them.  He doesn’t work that way so believers and people who don’t understand Christ both end up confused and discouraged.

Maybe we need to lead people to God by explaining that this is a story that you are already a character in, but we are all just waiting to see whose side you decide to fight on. The choice is yours, but the fact that you are in the story cannot be changed.

Just like a great movie, we know that some characters find things like life, hope, love, and peace while others perish and pass away during the story either fighting for the wrong thing or not ever choosing to fight at all.  These great stories do not have characters that fight for their own glory, but they are content fighting for a greater cause knowing the one they fight for can be trusted in every way.

What if people saw Christ and His message that way?

Yes, the truth is Christ offers so much to us, but do we choose to follow for what He can offer or for just Him? Don’t we all want people to love us for who we are, not what we can give them? 

You are in a story that goes beyond any of your own definitions.  Do you believe that the greater ending is coming and want to join the rest of us who are kept at the edge of our seats with our common hearts raised in anticipation?

Most of all do you believe that a story like this could be calling to someone like you…

Just some things to think about.   

With love,

Aimee

P.S. Humorous blog to come.