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.
