Catalyst Track: The Last Arrow // Day Two
Erwin Raphael McManus
This week’s 3-day track comes from the book, The Last Arrow: Save Nothing For the Next Life, written by Erwin Raphael McManus.
You need to act like your life depends on it, because it’s never just your life involved. You need to never settle for less because the world desperately needs everything you can bring to the table. Be careful of embracing the type of spirituality that has a deep disdain for ambition and hides apathy behind a language of simplicity. If you want to live a simple life, that’s a beautiful thing. If you want to use it as an excuse to live beneath your God-given capacity, that is negligence.
In this 3-day track, Erwin challenges us to live for others. He reminds us that sometimes we pray, but sometimes we are the answer to someone else’s prayer when we perform selfless acts of kindness.
Rather than excusing the challenge before you, embrace it with open arms and remember the life God created for you to live. Take the next few days to recognize ways in which you can save nothing for the next life by giving your all to others.
DAY 2: Searching for Refuge
The last family I met while we were in the Bekáa Valley was headed by a fifty-five-year-old Syrian woman who looked as if she were in her eighties. Her husband had been killed before they left Damascus, and the father of her grandchildren had gone to Germany more than two years before and they had not heard from him since. All the other relatives had been taken hostage, imprisoned, or executed. She was alone in the middle of this interim settlement with three grandchildren all under the age of ten. She told her story through her tears, and on occasion her words were unintelligible as weeping overwhelmed her and her sorrow seemed to consume all the oxygen from her lungs.
We left when we heard the call to prayer. She was a devout Muslim, specifically a Sunni Muslim, and we wanted to respect her desire to pray and ask God for help. We left quietly, and though the children were a beautiful delight, I was overwhelmed with sorrow myself. The reality of their condition was sobering, to say the least. They had no hope, no way out, no future that any human being would ever want for themselves or anyone they loved, and we were walking away, returning to our amazing lives, returning to all of our creature comforts, to all of the provisions that we would thank God for.
As we walked, I quietly asked the representative from the humanitarian agency we were working with if I could help this family in just a small way. I knew it was against policy and procedures. I knew that it would be inappropriate to give them money directly and that we needed to respect the process, but I just couldn’t shake the fact that in my pocket was more money than the family would see in three months. I was holding within feet of them enough money to buy them food and supplies that would otherwise never come their way. The worker’s response was as I expected. He graciously thanked me for my good intention but reminded me that it would violate the process they had implemented for long-term engagement of the refugees.
I might have asked two or three more times—I don’t remember. I told him I knew that making the gift wasn’t going to solve the problem and that maybe my desire to do this was more about what I needed to give than what they needed to receive.
REFLECT:
When have you experienced a desire that was more about what you needed to give than what someone else needed to receive?
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