Ben Wong
Although I’ve played a lot of sports over the years, I never had a major injury until about 10 years ago. Sure, there were minor cuts, sprains, bruises, and even small fractures, but nothing that persisted more than a month at most. But in late 2001, I hurt my back, and things have never been the same. The cause of the injury is a myriad of things, with the main cause probably being poor posture. I won’t go into the details, but if you see me slouching, it’s ok to remind me to sit up straight and stand up tall. The injury caused me to really seek relief from the pain, which still exists today.
Now, my physical discomfort hasn’t really changed my faith life. The injury isn’t debilitating to the point where I can’t function any more - it’s more of an inconvenience. But it’s true - you never know what it’s like until it happens to you. I no longer wonder why some people have trouble lifting things because of a bad back.
Financially, comfort isn’t something I think much of, either. As one of the younger people at CCUMC (it’s all relative …) I can’t say that I’ve ever lived through a period of significant hardship. Going to Africa further confirmed what I knew all along - I have plenty of comforts, whether they seem adequate or not. The reason things seem comfortable is because my life is rather predictable, and the psychological comfort of knowing that my future is more certain than many others is something that I hardly even appreciate.
With the Occupy movement and such, it seems to me that there are a whole lot of people who are facing financial hardship - enough that they are grabbing the headlines to highlight their suffering. I can’t say that I can identify with their economic situation, but I can see that it’s hurting. Personally, I have been affected by the downturn in the housing market (which is discomforting), but I’m nowhere close to the situations that the homeless and near-homeless face.
Going to Africa was definitely a contrast in comfort levels, both physically and financially. Initially, I felt that my role was to bring comfort to those in need of comfort - and that is definitely a positive thing to do. However, I’ve come to learn that missions isn’t a one-way street. I wondered what God was teaching me through my interactions with YCVM. I’m slowing realizing that by becoming more intertwined with their lives, I’m forced to see their deeper level of faith that my comfortable life has never been forced into. Beyond simply observing that deeper level of faith, my commitment to continued involvement is forcing me to give up my comfort in the predictable, and the controllable. It is challenging me to rely on faith, and less on what I can control. I’m definitely out of my comfort zone.
In our relatively comfortable lives, where we can establish comfort by controlling our surroundings, is there a reason to ask God into our lives? Maybe that’s where our faith is absent. Since we aren’t vulnerable, it’s hard to really rely on God for our livelihood. We don’t know what it’s like, since we haven’t experienced it. As a church, I hope that we are here to deepen our faith, since that is one of the unique aspects of Christianity. You won’t find any online Cyber Monday deals where people are rushing out in pursuit of more faith. It’s not a hot commodity outside of the church. But as a supposed “people of faith”, I hope that we are able to increasingly give up our comfort in the predictable, and seek to take our faith in God to a new depth.