Ask Me Where I Was

As I've mentioned before, we've had a lot of conversation lately about how we are called to love and serve the poor as Christ did, and wrestling with what exactly that might look like in our everyday lives. There's an incredible organization, Servants, that has sent people to the slums of urban Asia to live with and love the poorest of the poor. They literally live in the slums with these people, establish relationships with them, help determine their needs, and help enable them to resolve those needs as a community. What they are doing is incredibly inspiring, yet convicting at the same time, because they are truly serving the least of these. I was browsing on their website and came across this poem that was actually written after a Servants member's trip to Sudan - I was nearly in tears by the end, and all I could think about was those sweet children, how much they need, and how little I have done.

Ask me where I was.

And still I hear it
on and on
in the hidden corners of my mind
that eternal scream
which echoes
down the corridors of time,
refusing to be silenced
it accuses me
of passivity, thus
an accessory to crime.

And still I see it
that spreading stain
a wound that never heals
that bloodied mud
that asks me where I was
that asks me what I saw:
all the children dying
in the hidden corners
of a distant foreign famine,
in a small forgotten war.

So I pray my prayers
I pay my tithe
I read my Bible every day,
I live in plenty
I sleep in peace,
and offer praises to Our God:
that though you are there,
I am here,
and so your pain is far away,
a different world
I pray to never know;
for I hope to live a blessed life
where my hands are clean,
my heart stays pure,
and there'll be no stains on me.

And yet, and yet,
there are those awful moments
unguarded and unbidden
when your screams finally reach my ears
and you ask me if my Jesus
really is the same Jesus
that was tortured for his faith
crucified for his love,
and there are those awful moments
I finally see the terror in your eyes,
and you make me wonder
if He will one day ask me
where I was and what I saw
when His children were all dying
in a distant foreign corner
in a small forgotten war.

[Kristin Jack is the Asia Coordinator of Servants]