That's me on the right, in Romania in December 1992. Some friends and I went there shortly after it was opened to the West. We were partnering with some local missionaries and Romanian believers, performing concerts in places they were trying to start new churches. I knew it would be cold, so I went prepared and, being a Texan, most of my warm clothing was recreational: ski clothing. In the photo I'm wearing a black ski jacket with bright blue and hot pink accents--give me a break, it was in style then! What I didn't know was that Romania, particularly in the winter, is a world of gray. I stuck out like a sore thumb. I felt like I was walking through a black-and-white movie and I was the only thing in color. By Romanian standards, I might as well have been wearing a suit that lit up like Robert Redford's in The Electric Horseman. And my clothes were just the beginning. I drank sodas as a matter of habit--several each day--and realized after about a week that the Romanians were talking about it; a soda was a luxury to them, something they saved up for. I watched them line up when a store actually had toilet paper or apples, and eat parts of pigs that we throw away. They left every faucet on with buckets beneath them to catch water during the unpredictable 15 minutes a day that water would actually come out. It wasn't unusual for them to travel via medieval horse-drawn carts, or go on foot for long distances. Nothing came easy for them. There was very little infrastructure, few supply lines. If you needed something, you did your best to get it, but there was no guarantee that your best was good enough. I noticed they prayed a lot, and about everything. They lived in a place where supernatural intervention was necessary for survival. Each night of the tour, we would gather and share stories of what we called "God sightings," and not one night passed without several stories of how things that don't just "work out" in Romania worked out in answer to prayer.
My first inclination was to feel sorry for them, but that was difficult because they didn't feel sorry for themselves. They were thankful. They were thankful for everything they got; they were thankful for us; they were thankful when they had food for their families and a roof over their heads, and when the military police left them alone. They were thankful for a God who loved them, for a savior who died for them and rose again and who walked with them through their days. They lived in a third-world country, in the midst of political turmoil, with few opportunities and an oppressive government, and they were certain of God's benevolence.
It's a paradox I've encountered many times: people who have less, more convinced of God's benevolence than people who have more. This, of course, is a generality. It's not that there is anything noble about being poor or anything inherently evil about being rich. But my Romanian friends were able to draw such a direct line between God and provision. Whatever they had was theirs only because God had intervened to provide for them. I had lost that, slowly, over time, if I ever had it at all. I lived in a world where resources and infrastructure virtually ensured that I never did without, and the connection between those things and God's provision was subtly erased. My best was always good enough to get what I needed and most of what I wanted. Desire + Effort = Reward in my world, but it was an equation propped up by a thousand invisible supports, and God played no part in it. Suddenly my math was breaking down; in Romania, God = Reward, sometimes with my effort and sometimes without it. And sometimes God = Reward due to someone else's effort which, as it turned out, made God even more endearing.
We drove into Romania with jerry cans on the back of our van, and didn't have enough gas to get home. The government was rationing gas and would not allow us to fill up, so a Romanian Christian spent an entire day going through the gas line, filling up his little car, siphoning it from his tank to ours, then repeating the process. He arrived with our van on our last night, all tanks full, sick to his stomach from ingesting gas from the multiple siphoning sessions, but smiling. And God was sighted once again, amid tears and hugs and thoughts of how you can never repay someone for something like that.
It's a sad irony that God's material blessing tends to blind us to His benevolence. In the blinded state, we tell ourselves that we would feel better about God if we had more: more money, more ease, more security, more respect from our peers. For me, the opposite turned out to be true: only when I was more desperate for God's help did I recognize His goodness in my life.
My first inclination was to feel sorry for them, but that was difficult because they didn't feel sorry for themselves. They were thankful. They were thankful for everything they got; they were thankful for us; they were thankful when they had food for their families and a roof over their heads, and when the military police left them alone. They were thankful for a God who loved them, for a savior who died for them and rose again and who walked with them through their days. They lived in a third-world country, in the midst of political turmoil, with few opportunities and an oppressive government, and they were certain of God's benevolence.
It's a paradox I've encountered many times: people who have less, more convinced of God's benevolence than people who have more. This, of course, is a generality. It's not that there is anything noble about being poor or anything inherently evil about being rich. But my Romanian friends were able to draw such a direct line between God and provision. Whatever they had was theirs only because God had intervened to provide for them. I had lost that, slowly, over time, if I ever had it at all. I lived in a world where resources and infrastructure virtually ensured that I never did without, and the connection between those things and God's provision was subtly erased. My best was always good enough to get what I needed and most of what I wanted. Desire + Effort = Reward in my world, but it was an equation propped up by a thousand invisible supports, and God played no part in it. Suddenly my math was breaking down; in Romania, God = Reward, sometimes with my effort and sometimes without it. And sometimes God = Reward due to someone else's effort which, as it turned out, made God even more endearing.
We drove into Romania with jerry cans on the back of our van, and didn't have enough gas to get home. The government was rationing gas and would not allow us to fill up, so a Romanian Christian spent an entire day going through the gas line, filling up his little car, siphoning it from his tank to ours, then repeating the process. He arrived with our van on our last night, all tanks full, sick to his stomach from ingesting gas from the multiple siphoning sessions, but smiling. And God was sighted once again, amid tears and hugs and thoughts of how you can never repay someone for something like that.
It's a sad irony that God's material blessing tends to blind us to His benevolence. In the blinded state, we tell ourselves that we would feel better about God if we had more: more money, more ease, more security, more respect from our peers. For me, the opposite turned out to be true: only when I was more desperate for God's help did I recognize His goodness in my life.
