Bursting Bubbles

Friday 2/26/2016 4:44 AM

When I was a young man the story and plight of David Vetter became a media sensation. David was born with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a hereditary disease of the immune system that makes one susceptible to infection. David had an older brother who also had SCID and his brother had succumbed to an infection at the age of seven months because of it. Immediately after his birth David was put into a sterile environment made from plastic to protect him from a similar fate. He became know in the media as the boy in the bubble and lived out his twelve years in isolation.

For the first twenty-one years of my teaching career I taught at Valley Christian High School. I loved my job and the colleagues with whom I worked but eventually I felt like I was living in a Christian bubble. I do not mean to imply the students and staff had no problems or difficulties but, for the most part, an extremely supportive community of like-minded people surrounded me. The only students accepted into the school were those who had Christian parents that were members of a local church community. With that kind of clientele, when problems arose, as they inevitably do, there was usually support and assistance provided by the larger community. When you live and work in that kind of environment you can easily be unaware of the difficult issues and situations that are encountered by those who are not a part of such a community. The church of which I was a part and the school where I worked insulated me from those kinds of difficulties so that I eventually felt as if I were living in a bubble.

When Jesus walked the earth he was accused of being friends with sinners. He didn’t avoid the difficult situations and the painful problems experienced by the people of his day; he sought them out and brought healing and restoration. I began to pray that God would give me eyes and ears to experience the world the way he experiences it. Eventually God called me away from the little Christian bubble I was so fond of and allowed me to see and to deal with some of the intractable issues that are so much a part of life in our world. People began entering my life with whom I have no common experience. They began sharing the lose-lose situations in which they find themselves, where there seems to be no nice resolution. I often feel as if I am stumbling around in the darkness with them, the blind leading me, equally blind. I find my heart aching for those who suffer, wishing they could find the same kind of loving, supportive community of which I am a part.

This morning I read the writing of Rueben Job, the author of my devotional book. He writes, “In offering ourselves as fully as we can, we discover the cost of discipleship. For to bind our lives to Jesus Christ requires that we try to walk with him into the sorrows and suffering of the world. Being bound to Jesus Christ, we see barriers broken down and we are led to places we have never been before and to carry loads we have not even seen before. Having offered ourselves to Jesus Christ, we may expect to become the eyes, ears, voice, and hands of Jesus Christ in the world and in the church. The cost of salvation? It is completely free and without cost. The cost of discipleship? Only our lives – nothing more and nothing less.”

I still have a long way to go in breaking down barriers, entering into the sorrows and suffering of others, and sharing the loads with which they have been burdened, but it is comforting to think I may be on the right path. 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” I pray that I will be a good ambassador for Christ, willing to pay the cost of discipleship, to spend my life in service to others.