Hm. That cockroach just skritched its way into my heart.

Ye that fear the Lord, praise Him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify Him; and fear Him, all ye the seed of Israel.

For He hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath He hid His face from him; but when he cried unto Him, He heard.

My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear Him.

The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the Lord that seek Him: your heart shall live for ever.

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. Psalm 22:23 -27

Martin of Tours saw Christ in the face of the poor and in the commitment to nonviolence. He was born in what is now Hungary and as a young man was involuntarily enlisted in the Roman Army. Martin’s conversion to Christianity occurred after he met a beggar seeking alms. Without money to offer the man, Martin tore his own coat in half and gave one part to the beggar. The following night Martin dreamed of Christ wearing half of the coat.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

A cockroach just skritched up the wall and caught my eye, dragging my thoughts away from my friends the flitting sparrows.

And why, I thought, do cockroaches fill me with dread while sparrows fill me with delight? Both are God’s handiwork, His ahem, beloved creatures, mysteries of His creation. Both quite honestly are scavengers, or, ahem, an important cog in the circle of life. Who am I to judge?

And actually, that was the overarching theme of my most famous lesson last summer, Observation, to challenge my teachers to not approach life with a humdrum, same old same old, so I tossed down onto the table zip-lock baggies full of cockroaches and told the students to look, look again, and draw what they really see.

Observe carefully in order to gather data is the first International Baccalaureate science skill which is supposed to permeate every single one of the transdisciplinary units that we are writing this summer.

There are very few beggars on the streets of Ankawa, three or six to be exact. There is one who is the traditional beggar, scrawny and disheveled with tattered clothes. All of the beggars are fairly aggressive, touching our sleeves and forcing us to look into their eyes, thrusting their bodies in front of us, with fingers pressed to their lips to indicate their hunger. Then there is another man, fairly well-dressed, even elegant, and if you hand him a bill, no matter how small, he immediately rushes into the corner store market, I assume to purchase food. In Ankawa, alcohol and cigarettes are both purchased in specialty shops.

Then there are the children. One fairly sturdy boy, eleven or twelve years old, has stationed himself on a street corner that we pass every day walking home from the Mennonite House, before which, I might add we have just enjoyed a most delicious repast, complete with after-dinner tea and sweets and fruit.

There are two younger children who are holding small bowls of rather old candies which blankets their begging with an air of respectability. And one more boy who does the Wash Your Car Windshield gig.

Certainly, their presence on the street has nothing to do with us being Westerners. We are basically the only Westerners I have seen these three weeks (excepting one TearFund worker who used to work with MCC and has come over a few evenings of soccer games, and yesterday Charity and I spied two backpacked folks crossing a distant street). As one of the five pillars of Islam, zakat, is mandatory giving to the poor.

Yesterday, as usual, Ryan and I walked home, just at dusk, bumping our way through the usual gambit. The elegant man approached me at the green grocer as I was buying our morning bananas for our morning granola, so I handed him 250 dinar, a whopping twenty cents, and he turned and ran into the grocery store next door. But then we faced the kids for the next two blocks.

The one kid is pretty annoying, he grabbed right onto Ryan’s elbow and dragged along for a block as we stepped over broken cement slabs and slid past oddly parked vehicles sharing the sidewalk with us.

As Ryan and I chatted about this dilemma. The same question that our women’s Bible study tosses around because we are reading those sorts of books that push us out past the unconsidered comfortable life.  How can we learn to see the face of Jesus in the face of the afflicted?

And to give a little context to the Scripture reading this morning, it follows this familiar section:

But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,

He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

Using exactly the same word “afflicted” to describe our Savior Jesus the Christ and the beggar on the street.

And yet I still struggle with this step of faith. Even though I try to frame the reaching into my pocket as I-am-giving-to-Jesus-so-it-doesn’t-matter-if-he-buys-cigarettes, I still have a twinge of resentment as I hand over the 1000 dinar. And I know that is probably worse than not giving at all, that crabby non-joyful spirit.

Ryan said that when he steps out of the door, he hopes that there are no beggars, so he doesn’t have to deal with it.

And why only 1000 dinar? If I truly believe that I am going to have to ask, “And when did we see you Lord?” while He is separating the sheep from the goats, why do I not empty my purse into that outstretched hand every day like Mr. Martin of Tours?

Man, last summer was great. Rachel Redman last year gave me a check of $500 to “give away” as I wandered throughout the world, so I cashed it into a fistful of twenty-dollar bills that I could pass out with a big smile and squandering delight. Ahem. Is this not what is really true? That I own nothing? That it all belongs to Him? Has He not proven faithful? Do I not have more than sufficient on any global scale of measurement?

Sigh, and here is my meditation from June 21, just two short weeks ago.

Living in the atmosphere of Islam is proving – thus far – a tremendous spiritual stimulus. Mohammed is helping me. I have no more intention of giving up Christianity and becoming a Mohammedan than I had twenty years ago, but I find myself richer for the Islamic experience of God. Islam stresses the will of God. It is supreme. We cannot alter any of His mighty decrees. To try to do so means annihilation. Submission is the first and last duty of man. -Letters from a Modern Mystic, Frank Laubach

We have all experienced the awkward moment again and again, the persistent, well-practiced outstretched hand. And sometimes it is accompanied by direct open eye contact. And sometimes with lowered head. With or without tugging. And a thousand excuses flood my thoughts, excuses of judgement: too young, too drunk, too pathetic. But. As an offering to Him, as a daily practice to release it all to Him, I am resolved. As an outward sign of submission to His will in all.

Not sigh.

Hello. This is a clear calling for me, Christy Coverdale Voelkel. I have heard His voice. And so, once again, I am resolved. Mr. Frank said that concentration upon God is strenuous… but my task is simple and clear.

One day at a time. One step at a time.

Almighty God, you are King of all creation. You created order out of chaos, and You call us to strive for the peace that is not like the peace empires bring. Teach us to drop the weapons we carry in our hands, in our hearts, and on our tongues. Enable us to be soldiers of Yours who destroy the weapons of our oppressors with your grace. Amen.

The arduous path ahead.

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live. Ezekiel 37: 13-14

Everywhere people are beautiful or at least they have a beautiful side. On the boat from Manila last week was a painted woman, alone. I spoke to her because she was lonesome. Three of the ship's officers nearby tittered as though they thought a scandal was brewing, so I talked loud enough for them to hear. I told her I was looking for God. As naturally as a preacher she replied, “God is everywhere around us and in us if we only open our eyes. All the world is beautiful if we have eyes to see the beauty, for the world is packed with God.” “Thank you for that,” I said, “I love it! What are you going to Cebu for?” “To put on my special act. You see I dance before seven mirrors. Nobody else, so far as I know, in the world, has just this act. I am traveling alone, making my own engagements, for it is too expensive to have a property man. I was treated wonderfully well through India, wonderfully well!” I liked the way she pronounced that word, and the memories which lingered in her tired eyes. “And many people in Manila wrote me lovely letters, asking me to come back. Oh, the world is full of good people, full of good people.” When the dinner bell rang I said, “I am going about the world trying to find wonderful hours, and I shall remember this as one of them.”  - Letters by a Modern Mystic by Frank Laubach, April 18, 1930

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability, and it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, the loving vine-dresser. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I struggle to find typical tourist shots here in Erbil to share with the folks back home. Erbil is a work in progress.  A 6000-year- old work in progress, stretching back in time before human memory. I set myself the small goal of capturing one glimpse of beauty a day both last year, and this year as well, on my morning constitutional, and I had to do the broad smile thing when I flipped through last year’s photos and noticed a familiar shot.

Not a world of difference a year has made.

But every morning a woman leaves her kitchen door slightly ajar as she crosses the alley to her small spot with a can of water and pours it out onto the thirsty dust, an offering of hope. Every morning.

And sometimes I feel like my life is that little garden carved out of an empty lot with broken up plastic crates and shredded blue plastic tarps.

How long, oh LORD?

Dry dusty bones strewn across an ancient battlefield.

One of my daily walking companions interrupts his laps by moving a cracked hose from tiny flowering plant to tiny flowering plant in a rough-hewn ditch alongside the cement slab. And honestly, I kind of think to myself, “Really? Why bother?” with this dry probably ancient battlefield dirt.

And it is really hard not to get distracted by the dry dirt clumps and chocking weeds. The injustice and pain that stretch out to the horizon.

How long, O LORD?

This morning I carried this trusting in the slow work of God to my “fixed prayer list” that I started at the kitchen table at Rancho La Argentina one morning after I sent Anita off with Cindy the goatherd to fetch our morning milk.

And life by life I gave thanks to the LORD God for His loving vine dressing over the years. And I sure don’t understand all of this “chief end of mankind is to know God and enjoy Him forever,” stuff, and I try to wrap it up with glimpses that He is not bound by time and all of that “a thousand years is like one day” sort of verbiage.

But yes, as my prayers once again ran through the list of names like so many beads on a thread, through the plantings of His love, how much beauty is found there and deep roots and sturdy trunks and bright leaves and sweet fruit.

Amen.