helping/hurting

I have this job – its two fold really. Part of my time I spend as the Mission Director at my church. Such a big title that I often am not sure I live up to. I put in all I’ve got – and the rest is a lot of trusting that the Lord fill in that gap. It’s a good system I think.

I’ve spent a good part of the last year wrestling over questions I’d never had to face before. Suddenly with a new position I felt more accountable. Issues I’d chosen to be ignorant over for my personal gain I now have to question due to my new responsibility as a leader.

I few weeks back I found myself walking the dirt roads of Honduras. It’s crazy to me how freeing simple moments like that can be for me. It’s crazy to me how hard it is for most people to go to such places – yet every time I go I struggle more and more with being here.

Needless to say many of the questions I had been wrestling with in the previous months regarding short-term missions suddenly smacked me upside the head and I broke down right there on that dirt road. I stopped short and just looked around me. I looked down at the small girl that happened to be holding my hand at the moment and for the first time in a real tangible way asked myself if my being there was actually helping her. Suddenly the questions came flooding to my mind of stewardship and I wondered the long term effects of my being there.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the road with short-term mission projects and each time I come home wrecked. For weeks in fact I generally am in a fog upon returning to America. Each time it’s harder and harder for me to justify my standard of living. To be honest I don’t know that I’ve thought half as much as how my actions affected those I had left behind in whatever country I had been. In my American brain I just don’t think I ever thought my outreach wasn’t helpful. In many ways it might have been. In others I’m saddened to look back and realize we probably were making things more difficult for them.

As I move forward in this journey I can’t help but battle in my head over the long-term effects of what I’m doing, or I’m encouraging others to do. Yes helping at soup kitchens and food banks and feeding the homeless, rehabbing houses is great – but if we’re not getting to the root of the issue in the end we’re just feeding into the cycle of poverty. As the old saying goes – Give a man a fish & he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish & he’ll eat for a lifetime.