A few days ago I went to a nearby mall and saw, I am not kidding you, a woman feeding her dog an ice cream cone. It was sitting in her lap on a mall bench, was immaculately groomed and I’m pretty sure it was wearing clothes. And lapping at a McDonald’s ice cream come.
In my slum, the dogs are malnourished and nasty. Even their owners (if they have one) won’t touch them. They are skin and bones, often missing an eye, limb, or part of their tail. And they are constantly trying to scratch their skin off (and sometimes succeeding) because of their mange and fleas.
Yet in nearby neighborhoods women are dressing and feeding their animals better than the children around me are dressed and fed.
Also, within a 5-minute walk from my slum a new Walmart-like store is being built. In the complex will be a Starbucks. I will now live closer to a Starbucks than I ever did in the States. I could leave my mosquito-infested shack over a garbage-slash-sewage swamp, walk a few blocks and be inside the air-conditioned, coffee-scented, sterilized comfort of Starbucks.
This is the world of contrasts my neighbors live in. Their slums are neatly hidden away from the middle and upper class eyes, but the wealth of their fellow city-dwellers is right in front of their faces. They leave their slum and wait for their bus to arrive, amidst shiny new luxury cars and motorcycles. They might spend 75 cents for a street-stall meal while across the street others are paying $10 for practically the same food.
And now there will be a coffee shop they’ll pass by, selling a drink for an amount that could feed their whole family.Â
I, too, feel this contrast. I sometimes think it would be easier to be a missionary to the poor somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where just about everyone is poor and there is not the temptation of upper class comfort in my backyard. Not that these things are evil (I’m sure I’ll visit the Starbucks once in a while), but they do make it more of a challenge to choose the world of my slum-dwelling friends over the one I left behind. Like Jesus refusing those who would make him an earthly king, I have to refuse some of these things for the sake of identifying with those I am called to, those who Jesus says are blessed, those who receive the Kingdom in ways that I need to learn from.
And I want to partner with Jesus in sharing good news to the poor, news that makes the most impoverished believer richer than the wealthiest in this city. And I believe that as God’s kingdom comes he will heal this gap between the rich and poor, a product of the fall. This is what I want to spend my life on, and it feels well worth the things I leave behind.
The other sad thing is that they also come in contact with people who have eternal life, and living water to offer them. That is even more desirable than St.Arbucks. Yet, because of the effects of sin on the world, they usually don’t know of the spiritual squalor in which they live. If only. Thank you for your ministry.
rdb
Hi Sara, I have been reading your blog for a few months. We were missionaries in Thailand in the 90s, lived in Chiang Mai for a few years and in a small village in the Northeast for a few years.
Our neighborhood in Chiang Mai was mixed middle and lower class, definitely not slum. There was a dog who sired a huge family. We called him Carpet Face because he had fur left only on his face. One of his offspring we called Carpet Bag.
On a more serious note, when we lived in a poor village in the northeast, no one had much. But they bought TVs, on credit. “It’s only xxxbaht a month!” They told us over and over. And they saw all those contrasts you talk about on TV and wanted it all. It was sad.
You describe your life and ministry very well–your blog is one of my favorites. Thanks for sharing! Irene