Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Costa Rica Team Sunday

This Sunday we had the pleasure of the Costa Rica Mission Team leading us in worship. In early January a team of 12 representatives from our church went to visit and work with Strong Missions in Costa Rica. In 2012, this congregation raise over $10,000 to support the feeding programs of Strong Missions. Strong Missions is connected to the United Methodist Church through its Volunteer in Mission program (VIM). You can learn more about this trip and how you can help in the future by attending or hosting a presentation with your group or organization. Please contact Robert Bayse to schedule a presentation. 


The following was written and preached by members of the Costa Rica Mission Team on February 2, 2014.

 

Mike
          Today’s scripture from One Peter is a message directed to the Christian churches located in an area under the rule of the Roman Empire in the latter half of the first century AD. Christians of that era were counter cultural; they went against what society expected or demanded of them.  Because they were different, Christians were treated with scorn and subjected to verbal and physical abuse by others.  Government officials also began to view Christians as potential threats to civil order and initiated a campaign to harass and persecute them in a severe fashion.  To say the least, just as Christ had encountered before them, suffering was a normal part of the experience of being a Christian for those to whom this letter was written. 
          This morning we are going to draw from this lesson in the Bible.  We are going to relate a powerful story that we learned on our mission trip to Costa Rica and we are going to hear of the personal challenges that have been met by one of our mission team members.  From each of these different sources you will see how by doing good for others and by improving God’s Kingdom here on earth, we not only can bring comfort to those whom we are helping but at the same time help ourselves overcome suffering that we may be experiencing in our own lives.

Joy
          We all experience some kind of suffering whether the loss of a friend or family member, our own illness, broken relationships or even what just feels like bad luck.  During our mission trip, we learned of the story of Pastor Humberto who is no exception to that rule.  As a young man in his twenties, Humberto was working with members of his congregation cutting trees in the forest to provide wood for the construction of houses for those in need of shelter.  While doing this work, one of the trees that they were cutting fell in the wrong direction and landed directly on Pastor Humberto.  He was pinned underneath the tree and lay there in agony for three hours before his fellow workers could get access to a pickup truck to pull the tree off him.  Once loaded onto the back of the truck, they transported Humberto many miles across rugged terrain on bumpy, barely passable roads to the nearest hospital.  A full ten tortuous hours following the tree falling on him, Humberto was finally taken into surgery and the doctors discovered that he would be paralyzed from the waist down.
          Unfortunately, the suffering did not stop with the surgery or the loss of his mobility.  While in recovery he continued to be wracked with severe pain but his nurses refused to provide him with pain medication.  They taunted him saying, “You are a man of God.  If you are in pain, pray to your God to make it stop.”  Permanently paralyzed, far from home with no friends or family to comfort him, plagued by excruciating pain and tormented by those who were supposed to help him, Humberto called out for God to take his life. And God answered his call in a way Humberto did not expect.
Caltin
          I am no stranger to suffering, as I’m sure each of you could say as well.  While I don’t wish to equate my suffering to that of the Christians of Peter’s time or Humberto, it is important to recognize that we all suffer and we are all under the same call to endure our suffering and respond to it in Christ like ways.  During our trip, we had nightly devotions and one evening we were asked to say something we admired about the person to our right.  When my moment in the spotlight came, Mike began with, “Caltin, your quiet demeanor…” which led to hearty laughs.  I am certainly not known for being quiet and timid.  I always wear a smile and a laugh and I do that proudly which makes it no small task to stand up here and tell my story of suffering.  I would much rather remain the Caltin you all know and love or at least think is adorably funny.  However, if telling my story can help even one person get through some hardship, I gladly bare my soul today.  The last year and a half have been very bumpy for me.  My biggest struggle lies in being unemployed for so long and thus being without insurance.  I have diabetes and shortly before I lost my job at Wells Fargo, was diagnosed with the onset of depression.  With medication, I was able to manage both diseases with success but when the job ran out, the insurance ran out, the meds ran out, and I was given a trial that would test my faith and strength more than anything had before.  At first I was able to self-regulate my diabetes and my depression…well, in truth, I just ‘acted’ my way around them for months.  Really, I should be given an Oscar for my performance.  A few months ago however, I hit my breaking point.  Rather I should say my body hit its breaking point.  I was still on stage but behind the curtain I was constantly fighting thoughts of worthlessness, emptiness, that I had been forgotten by God and anyone who loved me, and worst of all I just wanted to stop existing. I really tried to back out of the trip to Costa Rica.  The health problems were running my life and the financial desert I was in made it seem impossible to be a part of this mission trip I had been so enthusiastic about.  God was not part of my struggle at this point.  I was under the impression that I could handle it on my own.  When that didn’t work, I sunk so low I was sure there was only one way to fix all my problems.
Mike
          But the Bible, God’s message, always offers us good news and hope.
          In today’s passage Peter tells the early Christians to humble themselves under God’s hand, that is, to become instruments for improving God’s kingdom here on earth.  By trusting in God, they could cast all their cares and worries to God…not one or two…ALL of their worries.  Why? Because God cares about His people.  God loves us.  When we become servants of God’s will and help others who are troubled or in need, we lighten our own suffering by thinking less about ourselves and more about others.
Peter warned the early Christians about forces that would threaten their faith in God and that would “devour them.”  Peter saw that when people are suffering and undergoing hardship they are vulnerable to questioning their faith and being led away from God.  He urged the people to trust in God, to place themselves under God’s protection by “humbling themselves under God’s mighty hand”.  Peter further noted that whatever suffering that the people were called upon to endure during their time on earth paled in comparison to the everlasting time thereafter where we will be completely restored and renewed in the image of God. 
          Peter realized that people can draw strength from being part of a community and he pointed out that the followers of Christ were part of a much larger family of believers around the world who were facing similar challenges.  Being part of a larger group of people with a common set of problems allowed the early Christians to help each other as they knew very well the suffering that each was undergoing. 
The lessons apply to us today as well.  We must avoid the temptation to blame God and lose our faith when misfortune occurs.  When bad things happen to us, that is the time to be even more resolute in seeking to serve God.  We can do this by reaching out and extending a helping hand to our brothers and sisters in need—no matter where they live.  By keeping our focus on the needs of others rather than our own difficulties, we can cast off the stresses that torment us and enjoy the comfort of God’s Peace.
Joy
          There is good news in Pastor Humberto’s story as well.
          Overcome by his hopelessness and suffering, Humberto prayed to God to let him die so that his pain would cease.  This went on for days and one morning, a person whom Humberto had never seen before came into his room and told Humberto that he had been sent by God.  Humberto asked the man, “Why? Why did God let me survive this when I am crippled and in so much pain?”  The stranger answered, “No por que, para que?”  Which means “Not why, for what?”
          The stranger then slipped out of the room and was never to be seen again.  When Humberto asked the doctors and nurses if they had seen a man come into his room, no one had.   Humberto then knew that God saved his life for a reason and from that point forward he would place his complete faith in God’s hands.  When the nurses finally approached him with pain medication, Humberto refused saying that God had taken away his pain.  That was 14 years ago and now Humberto is a pastor in one of the slums we visited which is home to thousands of refugees and is marked by extreme poverty and gang violence.  But, Humberto is there, in his wheelchair, pain-free and positively effecting change in his community, making it look more like the Kingdom of God.  Humberto told us that as soon as he turned his attention to figuring out what God wanted him to do, he thought less of himself and his circumstances and more about how he could help others.
Caltin
          Through several chats with Pastor Jen, she helped me hear God’s words urging me to trust God and God will provide a way for me to go on the trip and to get me through whatever I was going through…I was able to join the Costa Rica mission team by heeding God’s words of wisdom.  My struggles were far from over though.  As the date of departure to Costa Rica neared, I became more and more filled with anxiety.  How would I deal with the constant thirst and other symptoms of completely out of control diabetes in a third world country where the water may not be safe to drink?  My biggest worry was that this suffocating depressing darkness I was in would prevent me from participating and helping.  I knew I was too unstable to be going out of the country but Jen said trust God so that’s what I did.  From the moment I woke up the morning we left until the moment I returned to my home I experienced the most peaceful calm and relief I have ever experienced in my life.  The entire time I was in Costa Rica I did not have one symptom of diabetes or depression.  I could feel my sugars level out and was granted the freedom to focus on doing God’s work and recognizing God’s purposes in sending me to Costa Rica.  Being free from depression and demands of diabetes enabled me to put others before myself and provided the opportunity to do as much good as I could fit into 8 days.  My chains were gone and I was set free.
My struggles are still far from over, but this experience has given me several things to consider.  Back here in the states my suffering seems just a bit more bearable, I know without a shadow of a doubt that God’s promises are no joke…when God says trust in me and do good and I will take your suffering from you….God will make good on that promise, and lastly that we are all connected in so many ways but most apparent to me, through our suffering in Christ.
          Each of us will encounter problems in our lives and some of those problems may be quite severe.  Some of us may be going through some pretty tough times right now.  What Peter reminds us is that we don’t have to be in these struggles alone.  God is available to help us if we are willing to let that happen.  No matter what we are going through, we cannot let our problems define who we are.  Our trip to Costa Rica illustrated that responding through hardship by doing good can provide us with two paths to choose from in order to heal.  As in Humberto’s case, doing good can give us a purpose to our suffering and in my case doing good for those in need can help get us through our suffering by focusing on other things.  And let’s not forget that by choosing his path, Pastor Humberto’s life and the lives of countless others are better by incalculable degrees. 
          Our prayer for us all is that we start today to let Pastor Humberto be our example and inspiration by repeating and living the mantra “No por que, para que?”  “Not why, for what?” 
Amen.
         


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