namaste

I have just begun wrapping up 10 years of involvement in the middle school ministry at my church. The first two years I was with students and helping run the program like I got paid but I didn’t. The third year I got paid $800 dollars a month to intern and I thought I was rich (rent was like $125). The last seven years I have been a full time member of the church staff and somewhere along the line I became an associate pastor. I look back now and long to know that what I was involved in really made a difference. I yearn to see that my labor was used by God for the Jesus of Nazareth to be born in the lives of those I was with; as the apostle Paul did. As the text messages, myspace comments, face to face interactions and e-mails slowly pour in I wrestle with how to receive the responses. Comments like “you changed my life” make me squirm because I don’t know what exactly they mean or how to hear it.

In his book “The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an ordinary radical” Shane Claiborne shares this about his time working in Calcutta with Mother Theresa.
“Over and over, the dying and the lepers would whisper the mystical word namaste in my ear. We don’t really have a word for it in English (or even a Western conception of it). They explained to me that namaste means “I honor the holy one in you.”

As I reflect on Shane’s story I realize that this is what I desire to hear. That our call in life is to be “instruments of God’s peace.” The theme of being “used” like a trusty shoe, guitar or car in God’s hands is so attractive to me (hence the title of my blog). Our lives should bear the frightening but familiar fingerprints of God’s continual use. I am his instrument. It is a wonderfully important call but at the same time shockingly humble.

After one of the longest hugs I think I have ever exchanged a junior in high school looked deep into my eyes and squeezed out the following words “I probably would have gotten things figure out when I got older but there is no way I would have in 6th or 7th grade. You are the main reason I gave my life to God.” There is no sweeter sound to someone who has shared life with a middle schooler then those words. He did not mean the moment he “accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and savior (or whatever that line means)” but that he screws up a lot but he is regularly realigning his life with God’s dream for the world. I think back to that moment now and I can almost hear a whisper in my ear as his lips are moving and sharing with me what my life has meant to him. I hear the whispered word, namaste. The creaky door of my spirit begins to open up and I receive whatever it is that God is saying through this young man. I don’t take compliments well but I’m learning to receive people communicating the spirit of honoring the holy one within me.