visiting

A friend of mine here told me that if you plan to come for 3 months, plan to be sick at least one of them. I laughed it off. Until I started getting sick a lot.

Here I am, day 6 out of the one month I’ve been here that I’ve spent sick and on the couch. This morning I woke up pretty late to a missed call and text message from Elina, CiH woman, friend, in-country director, asking where I live because she was going to come visit me. This wasn’t a question or an offer if she could come, she was going to come, and she was going to bring 3 other CiH women with her, Doreen, Tresa and Pauline, to check in on me.

In a culture where I’ve talked to too many women about their husbands dying 7 days after a bug bite, I’m sure the women were more nervous than I was about the severity of a sinus infection, but the care is the topic of discussion.

These 4 women left their homes, their familiarity, to come to a strange neighborhood of excess, steel gates, electric fences, and guard dogs. They risked to love. They entered the unknown to visit. This visit wasn’t dumping a pan of lasagna off and leaving. It wasn’t even a visit with an agenda. The visit wasn’t a noun but a verb. It was 4 women coming into my house, enjoying lunch with me, chatting with me, sharing their culture with me, loving me, translating for me, and ending our time with and incredible prayer for me and for this household. Sure they didn’t have to drink weird smoothies and eat my American PB&J sandwiches with me, but they did because they loved. Sacrificial love. Love that inspires action. Love that encourages, protects, provides. Little did they know, or maybe they did, but Jesus used them mightily this morning. These 4 women, entering into my pain, my isolation, my pajama-wearing self, my messy house, did so out of love. This is visiting. This is a glimpse of what Jesus does for us all every hour of every day. Two women cleaned my kitchen, one woman showed me how to properly wrap myself in Zambian chitenge. How incredible. They served, the prayed, they encouraged. They didn’t say “I love you” but I felt it more than I have in weeks, being squeezed tight by our Savior. The church isn’t divided by the haves and have-nots. It’s not divided by language or culture. The church is global, it’s all people coming together with Jesus in common, the love that drives them to do crazy things like this.

This causes me to rethink our “visiting” in the States, usually built on convenience, disguised self-promotion, and comfort. Visiting doesn’t usually fit into our schedules. It’s not usually easy. But neither was Jesus dying so that we could live.

So the next time we think we have something to give this culture or to teach them, I would beg us to stop and see what this culture, what the people of Jesus here, have to show us.

Today, I’m thankful for visiting. Whether it’s from those 4 incredible women, or it’s from the Lord when I’m alone here, I’m so grateful to see more of Jesus in the visiting: the messy, beautiful, inspiring kind.

James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their afflictions, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Today, I’m thankful for James 1:27. To see the extravagant love of the Father that drives us to love, to visit others, to sacrifice, to seek holiness, because that’s where joy and peace are found.