Born to Privilege

One of the themes that has been running through my mind of late, before and especially since my trip to Haiti, is why was I lucky enough to be born where I was.  Why was I born in America, to Christian parents, while others in the world were born into suffering in places like Port-au-Prince and levels of poverty that make my life look like opulence.  This same theme seems to be on mind a lot of Ann Voskamp of the "A Holy Experinece" blog as well.  Below are some excerpts from one of her recent posts (Because If Us- Christians Really Care-and We Really Do Right).

I look around the table. All six of these kids looking like their Dad. Ocean blues eyes. Freckles flecked across summer bronzed skin. Sun streaked hair.

And I think of Haiti. I think of Haiti and India and the farmhouse I grew up in.
How you live before you die can depend on where you took your first breath and what if I wasn’t born here?

“What if none of you were born here?” The kids stare at me blankly. It’s amazing how we can be complacent to amazing grace. “What if you didn’t have your last name? What if you weren’t born in this country — but somewhere else?”

Sometimes the startling grace of your life can drop you right to your knees and is there any other way to rightly see your life?
What did Christine Caine say that that girl had said? That beautiful girl who’d been sold into bondage and trafficked for pleasure, that girl, a survivor of rape and neglect and manslaughter, who looked right into Christine and said it with her heart running liquid right down her cheeks, "If you really cared about us — then why didn’t you come sooner?"

Then why in the world didn’t you come sooner?

I’m thinking of India and Haiti and the girl born on the wrong side of the tracks right across town and if you really care about us, then why in Christ’s name didn’t you come sooner?

Why in the world am I sitting here eating chocolate and thumbing through glossy pages and fluffing up my comfortable little North American life?

There’s a whole aching, drowning world out there and they’re asking: If what you say is true and if you really care about us, what in the world have you been doing and why in the world didn’t you come sooner?

Who is just playing at all this and who really believes any of this?

I look around the table at our six kids.  Kids talking about the best university programs and the cheapest cars for the best insurance and going to the beach on Sunday and who is getting the canoe down for river jaunt and how do you balance enjoying the blessings with enduring the Cross?

How can we who are saved, who are resting on the wood and righteousness of that Cross, look at a whole world out there drowning in a veritable storm of darkness and just breathe this happy relief that we’ve been plucked out to safety? How have I been doing it for so long?

When was the last time all the evangelicals were actual evangelists and shared the message of salvation with those who are dying without any hope of rescue unless they know? What have we all been doing and why didn’t we all go sooner?

And I want to grab that heart pounding this stuff loud in my chest and too loud in my head and I want to just — gag it.

Because I like the safety of the Wood and the fluffed up life and isn’t it enough to take care of my small little life and these half dozen kids and not do anything that hurts too much?

I like quiet and comfortable and not real pain and just some good hymns belted out on Sunday morning. Normal. I like Christian normal.

But there’s no gagging a heart that’s been possessed by grace.

And after Haiti? When I was scared to open my mouth for the howl? Three weeks later, I’m sitting here at the dinner table with a prayer book and this howl that I just. can’t. stop.

If grace really slays you — then you’ve been crucified by Christ and you are bought and you are no longer yours but you are His.

And my mouth, tail of the heart, it can’t lie still and the words give the heart away:
“Can you be a Christian and not carry a cross?”

Why am I sitting in an air conditioned office, contemplating returning to my family who really wants for nothing and enjoys a relative life of ease with running water that you can drink out of the tap, reliable electricity, climate control, and a safe home more space to exist in the combination of the houses I visited while in Haiti?  Why are we here and there are so many others in so many other theres?  Why does my new friend Manasse have to scrape by to provide for his wife and two beautiful daughters, while I sit here and write this making probably more money today than he will make in months or even this year?

Why????