EVANGELISM, HOW DOES CALVARY FIT INTO ALL THIS?
THIS PAST WEEK WE WERE IN WINNIPEG, CANADA WHICH IS A VERY UNIQUE AND DIVERSE COMMUNITY.
You will be greeted by Uber drivers from a wide range of nations, shop clerks from the Philippine Islands, hotel workers from the Ukraine, a host of people from the Caribbean and wherever Great Britain colonized they have come. In Winnipeg alone there are over 200,000 of the 2 and 1/2 million First Nations people who live there in the city alone.
Today, the apartheid atrocities under British Rule are being exposed and the tears of weeping mothers are being heard only to be scoffed at and dismissed. Politicians make promises they do not keep and dig for themselves a treacherous shallow grave of contempt. This is a grave that the souls of those who fell into the hands of those supposed to be educators; raped and murdered them, attempting to abort the language and the customs that made them who they were. They treated them as if they were without souls all the while preaching what they call, “The White Man's Message.”
All this was in attempt to destroy a people group, but the First Nations survived. Today there are even First Nation politicians who are as corrupt as Benedict Arnold. The shame and pain left behind through years of abuse is seen in the dependence on alcohol and drugs, divorce, and orphaned adults who have been abandoned, only to be raised in single parent homes where mothers struggle for daily bread.
I heard a different kind of weeping this week; a groan so deep it was like a roar of a lion or Rachel weeping for her children. It was not just women but grown men standing unashamed, weeping with bowed heads, sobbing over their childhood homes stolen by the Crown. To the government's shame the heartache is still an issue, and I heard a different kind of groan from out of the city this week in the geographical center of North America. My problem is I heard God weeping through these tears, just as surely as Jesus wept over DEAD LAZARUS. I heard Him weeping.
I have said for years the travail found in Romans 8 is not a Kumbaya moment, but our travail must equal the groaning and travail of the world around us. The groan and travail of abortions, the silent screams, the over dosed sons and daughters, suicides of those who just cannot take it anymore. The empty seats at holiday tables along with the boys and girls who have buried their faces in their pillow at night (if they have one) and wept until they had no more power to weep. Not to mention the fiendishness of human trafficking that is happening right this very minute on a block near you.
A few years ago, we were passing out a portion of two million dollars worth of new clothes in the hometown of Sitting Bull. A woman came to the park where we set up, only to tell us a young man who had a disagreement with his father, went to the back of the house and just as the father rounded the corner of the backyard, the boy poured gasoline all over himself and lit a match and set himself on fire.
This generation of First Nation youth (Indian / young people) have a match in their hand and the governments of America and Canada have the gas can in their hands.
On another note, one of the places my journey in life has taken me is Molokai, in the Islands of Hawaii. It was an isolated island and chosen because of a parcel of land which was isolated on the shoreline, far below a which was ideal to keep those who had become lepers separated from the healthy population on the island. A Catholic dedicated himself to serve them at the risk of his health and life. He served with love. One day he met them for their scheduled chapel service, but this day would be different. He greeted them with this welcome, “Today WE LEPERS WILL SING TOGETHER."
WHO CARES?
Throw out the Lifeline!
Your Pastor,
CLEDDIE KEITH