My Inheritance

I am horrified.

Horrified to a point beyond appropriate description.

Why?

I caught myself saying the unthinkable not 20 minutes ago.

"It's not really my problem anyway. I should'nt worry about it." 

I sat on the porch, read a couple of blog posts from a couple of friends, and was suddenly washed over with a sense of injustice, cruelty, thoughtlessness, insane depravity.

Not because of what I read. Because of what I realized.

And not because of someone else. Because of me.

It wasn't like I tried to get this sense. It just came.

My mind flew. A knot the size of Montana formed in my stomach. It's there still. My legs feel a little weaker than they did before--and it's not because I climbed the cement mountain home from worship.

How could I say it isn't my problem? 

My reference was to something very different and very far removed from my Thailand home, my mission here. A friend, again in need of the Lord, of encouragement, maybe even a sound spanking, was on my mind.

As I walked to worship I was pleading with God to do something in this person's life, to touch a heart and bring it back from cowardice, from the corner, to light, life, true godliness, and the perfection of the character so full of possibilities that I can see.

My heart was heavy with the sense that it was urgent--that this friend needed to act. That God had to do something before it was too late. And so I pleaded.

And after worship, as I walked back along the trail, that heaviness still in my heart, was when I said the unthinkable. This heaviness suddenly seemed silly. It was reminiscent of my inner agony at the goings on of other friends that had once been in my life. And for a brief moment, the heart rebelled. Then came the words: "It's not my problem. They aren't my problem. I shouldn't worry about it."

Someone who's loved me from birth, from the moment I came into the world, has told me before that I have too big of a heart. It cares too much--and tries to help everyone. When it was said to me, tears filled my eyes and I cursed my love for others.

No, it didn't last. But at the time, I blamed that tendency, that extra capacity to love, befriend, and be that God blessed me with, for all my difficulties, and thus hated it.

I shrink from admitting it now.

How could I say it's not my problem? 

How on earth? How?

I assure you, THIS IS MY PROBLEM.

Whether it's the friend in America who needs the Lord, or the little girl on my porch in Thailand who needs a band-aid, it is my problem. 

Why?

Why does it need to be my problem?

It's my problem because God has brought it to ME. 

Not someone else.

ME.

There have been many times I've been told to just let well enough alone. I've told myself that. "It won't do any good. I won't make any impression. They'll just ignore everything you try, take it the wrong way. It's a hopeless case--they're too stubborn."

Who am I to say someone's too stubborn, when I myself am proficient at the art, and the Lord God Almighty has been dealing with that kind of thing from me and a million others, daily, for thousands of years?

He's considered all of us HIS problem.

And of all, He didn't need to be concerned.

But He was.

Because He loved.

Because He loves.

Because He has a big heart. A heart bigger than we can know.

He's only loaned me a little of it, so I can be His words, His hands, His arms, His love, to a dying race of sinners.

How on earth could I think that shelving that piece of God's heart, and poetically saying that it isn't my problem, is being a good steward?

And this isn't just God's heart we're talking about.

This is my inheritance.

God's given me the best kind of inheritance to use and keep on this earth.

And if I'm faithful, I'll get to keep it for all eternity.

A little of His love, His heart.

And more importantly, a wealth of happy, redeemed souls, brought to the Kingdom because I took the time to consider their tears, their pain, my problem.

Tears fill the eyes, trace paths down a guilty heart. Sorrow chokes. Remorse blinds.

How could I say it's not my problem? 

God forgive this doubting sinner.

My challenge is this.

There are too many out there who say the same thing. Daily. In words and many more in actions.

How can you say it isn't YOUR problem? 

The homeless man on the street, the orphaned child on the cover of the magazine, the dying mother in the jungles of Thailand, the burdened, weary youth in America.

They are all your problem if the Lord brings them to you.

But no.

Don't call it a problem.

They aren't a problem.

This is your inheritance. 

I repeat.

They are your business. Your inheritance.

Get off your couch. Drop the remote. Throw away the bag of potato chips.

Or better yet, get out of your pew, off the platform, out of your neatly starched suit.

It's time for action.

NOW.