[Gary Haugen serves as President & CEO of IJM Click here to listen to his sermon from this past Sunday.]
This weekend I had the privilege of being with the Imago Dei church community in Portland, Oregon. Imago has been championing the work of justice both locally and globally. It was such a joy to be given the opportunity to preach at each of their Sunday worship services, to experience the way God moves through His word and His work, inviting us into the adventure.
I was profoundly moved this weekend to hear the personal testimony of a young nurse practitioner who had just returned from a mission trip to Liberia – a nation simply demolished by the wrecking ball of civil war. She and her small team from Imago Dei had helped local Liberian nurses establish a makeshift “clinic” that served more than a thousand people in a few days who otherwise had no access to any medical care. Humbly and authentically, this sister shared the trauma of confronting all the healing she and her team could not provide. She manifested the costly price of authentic, Jesus-like love in our disastrously fallen world. In order to save a few from death and excruciating pain, this sister had to be willing to endure the heartache and trauma of confronting all those whom she could not save.
Painful, disorienting, not fun. Nothing tidy or easy here.
For me, this is perhaps the most fundamental barrier to actually getting out there and doing something. I want to share with a suffering world, but I’d rather not share in the world’s suffering. And yet, in the real world, that is what love requires. And the literal truth is this: if the whole Body of Christ were willing to love like this sister, every Liberian could have access to reasonable health care. In 2008, there is certainly nothing impossible about 3 million people getting basic medical care.
These challenges of caring for the sick are so much more doable than we imagine – especially when we consider the global capacities and resources of all those who seek to follow Jesus in our world. Likewise for the work of justice; that is, addressing the problem of violence that lies underneath so much of the suffering of the poor.
The nurse practitioner reported that 40% of Liberian women are victims of rape – which comports with WHO data which states that gender violence accounts for more ill-health in our world than malaria and car accidents combined. But who is working on stopping the violence?
