Lessons from a Refugee Camp

Then, speaking to all, he said, ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross everyday and follow me.  Luke 9:23

The span of our life is seventy years, perhaps in strength even eighty; yet the sum of them is but labor and sorrow, for they pass away quickly and we are gone. So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. Psalm 90:10,12

Given the right perspective, once again "wisdom", all that we renounce, our self, is really not that big stinking much, just a few dried weeds blowing in the wind.  It should really make things a lot easier.  The daily walk bit.  Really do I want to be part of a big plan or caught up in something that gets blown away or burned up or whatever. 

I really am blessed, because when I was young and pattern-forming, I got to live in a refugee camp for two years.  It was so much a place for developing a proper perspective.  When you ain’t got nothing, stuff really doesn’t matter.  The platitude that people matter is the in and out reality.  Food is something to fill the belly.  Clothes, such that they are, cover our nakedness. Furniture is to set our bowl on. 

And suddenly little things like parts of speech and punctuation matters.  Because a comma doesn’t come after “himself,” the implication is that the renouncing oneself is not a one time deal, but tied up very much with the adverb “everyday.”  Every day I need to renounce myself and every day I need to take up my cross. No comma.  It is part of the same decision, the same choice, the same action.  Which is good.  Because then I don’t have to worry about the “What ifs.” 

That was another refugee camp lesson.  Things were really, really hard.  But over and over, step by step, I just kept saying to myself, “Can I survive for five more minutes?  Sure, you can do anything for five more minutes.”  So I lived five minutes at a time, lugging that cross, and it was ok.  And God proved Himself faithful and good, five minutes at a time. 

It’s not my life.  So I don’t have to worry about what lies around the corner.  It is His life, I have renounced it, so it is His business to take care of it.  I just have to worry about the next five minutes, which is plenty enough to keep me busy. 

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

Man’s wants remain unsatisfied till death.

Then, when his soul is naked, is he one

With the man in the wind, and the west moon,

With the harmonious thunder of the sun.

                                                               -Dylan Thomas