“Itty, bitty living space..”

For some of you, the title of this blog may ring familiar. Others of you may assume this blog will in some way relate to my current living quarters. Though I could by grand means go on a rant about the space I live in, :-p, this blog heads into another direction entirely. For that matter, it’s not my living space I’m writing about…

In the early 90s, Disney produced an animated movie called Aladdin. The movie chronicles the story of a young guy, from the wrong side of the tracks that falls in love with a beautiful princess, eager to do more than settle for arranged marriage. Aladdin was one of my favorite movies as a child. Robin Williams was cast as the voice of Genie, in my opinion the funniest and best character in the movie. Genie,  is bonded forever to live in a magic lamp and grant three wishes to each and every master that stumbles upon him. Being supernatural, he has the power to be any size but in reality, with all his power, is quite large. My favorite line from the movie is when Genie, in a tiny, sarcastic, reflective voice refers to the lamp as “..itty, bitty, living space.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about living space. God has really been bringing the idea up in my mind, from seeing where one of the Ithemba ladies lives, thinking about what living space looks like for my return to the states, to taking time to really look out of the sea of shack houses in the townships. God has been speaking to me through these things and more about what His living space looks like.

I’ve been wondering how often we give Him “itty, bitty living space.” How often do we try and put such a BIG GOD in such a little box? I could branch off from this about the living space in our hearts that we give to God, but I’m centering more here on the space in our lives. How much room do we give God to move?

This week the Ithemba program is over because school is on holiday until January. Some kids still show up because they know they can get a meal there, which they still do, but the program is technically on holiday. All four women that work there have every other day off. Because of the program ending, our leaders told us that this week my ministry team had to come up with what ministry we would be doing. They suggested we be intentional with our ministry, reaching out relationally to the women and children. My team came together on Sunday and decided on Monday that we would head to Ithemba, see what women were off that day, and then go and visit one of them. With this being the last week of ministry for this semester (next week is debrief and then we all head home or elsewhere for the Christmas break) we really wanted to take the time to build relationships. This week would provide us the opportunity to do that without being held down by the schedule of Ithemba.

So, yesterday we showed up at Ithemba and saw that Nomsa wasn’t there. Mama Queen and Lusanda were there with the less than fifteen children that had showed up. We played with the children for maybe half an hour. In that time, some of the team had decided they wanted to stay and take the kids to the beach. Our team ended up splitting in half. Myself and two others headed to Nomsa’s house, while the other half stayed behind. I’ve never done house visits, in Africa or otherwise. I had no idea what the day would look like. All we knew was that we felt called to go visit this woman we worked every day with. We headed there with open minds, ready to sit and chat or do anything around the house she might need. It was odd, I have to say, not having a structured plan of what we were going to do there. That said, I felt really good about it and was excited to go and visit with her. Once we found her house up in the townships, we ended up staying there for about two and a half or three hours. All we did was talk and it was amazing. We covered so many subjects and it was just so great to get to know more about her life and her spiritual walk.

That, in and of itself could have been enough for the day. With that alone, I would have felt like God’s hand was there and mightily working. But the Big Guy had even more in store for our time with Nomsa. During the conversation she was talking about the electricity in the townships. The company, for reasons I don’t understand, frequently turns off the power for the entire area. They will turn it back on, only to turn it off again every couple of days. The people there never know when it will be turned off or on. While telling us this, Nomsa mentioned that because of that it was impossible to use the stove. Nomsa has a five year old daughter and several other people live in her house. So, not being able to cook for herself and the others is a problem. When we asked if they were stuck just eating sandwiches until the electricity was back on, she was forced to reveal that there was actually no food in the house. There was also no money for her to buy any food as she’d given all her money away to help other people, something we learned earlier in the conversation. We asked her what she was going to do for food and she jokingly said that she was fasting.

Nomsa is a very strong, independent woman. She’s been through a lot and still continues to have many struggles. The struggle for money is a continual thing for her and those around her. Letting people know though, that she needs help, is not easy for her. With no hesitation, we asked what she wanted for dinner. We didn’t know how we would go get food and get back into the townships after the set time to be out (because of the problems that take place in the townships we are supposed to be heading out around 5 pm), but I think we all knew the Spirit was leading us to do what we could. We ended up not leaving her house until 5:30 pm, arranged for a ride to the store on the way back to UCSA, picked up a camping stove at UCSA, grabbed a couple of meals worth of food at the store, and got a ride back into the townships. The thing about buying the food, is that I know God was leading us to do that. I know He sent us to her house that day to do more than bless her by spending time with her. One of the ways that I felt God in all of it was in the simple fact that He was telling me to spend money on the groceries and I did it without hesitation or argument. The thing is, I should have selfishly been fighting that as I don’t have much money to my name. I should have been wanting to keep it, unwilling to spend it, because I needed it. But I didn’t think twice about it. God basically just said, “You don’t have much. But what little you have is mine and here’s the reason you have it.” All this took place in the split second after she said she didn’t have any way to feed herself or the others. And in that time, all the things I really could use that money for on myself, faded away. All the personal needs I thought were important and had worried about being able to provide for, didn’t matter. All that mattered was that He said “Go.” and I was gonna.

I say all of that not to point at myself for anything I’ve done. In no way was that of me. I, like all of us, am a selfish, self-centered, self-absored human being that has to pray over and over to die to herself. Yet another reason why, I know God was in what took place that day. I came back from ministry that day, feeling such joy. You know, the joy you feel when you are confident that you were right where God wanted you. It was so freeing to come back from ministry not worrying about what time it was, or what all I had or wanted to get done in my “free” time. Instead, I came back so joyous, so blessed by what I’d experienced. And that’s when God broke out the ‘box’ talk. See, God’s been teaching me a lot about boxes lately. He used the day with Nomsa to further enforce it all. When we headed to Nomsa’s house, we had no idea what that time was going to look like. We considered just sitting with her or maybe seeing if she needed help around the house. But, we really felt strongly that we needed to go open to whatever God wanted the day to look like. And so that’s what we did. We went and had a completely Spirit-led day of ministry. We could have made some huge plan for that day with her that we’d deemed as such a grand idea. In that though, we would’ve been quenching the prompting of the Spirit. Even more so though, we would’ve been putting God in a box.

It’s odd to me to think that even in ministry, even on the mission field, we can put God in a box. But something He’s been showing me lately is that in our time here, we’ve been doing just that. Structure is a necessary evil I’m sure but I think we’ve gone above and beyond that. I think we’ve become complacent as a team so that we’ve headed into ministry a lot of the time with a set plan of what God can and cannot do that day. Maybe it’s never voiced, in fact I’m sure it rarely is, but it’s like sometimes we’re telling God what His limits are for the day. How crazy is that?! I know this is a human struggle, that of constantly putting God in a box. I think no matter where we are in our lives, we put limits on God. It would seem that even when we let Him out of a little box, all we do is give Him an upgrade. Perhaps we can never not put God in a box, no matter what the size of the box is. We’re always learning more about Him and what we think we know is always being blown away, causing us to need to make the box larger. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just rambling on now. All I know is that God’s been really showing me that even in our ministry, even on this trip, we’re all (and believe me, I’m including myself) putting Him in a box.

He’s giving me a huge passion, a fire, something I wish I’d felt more of before, to be creative, to go above and beyond the “hours of ministry”, to be more Spirit-led, and to stop trying to tell God how much He can use me each day. I just feel like, it’s not right keeping Him in that “…itty, bitty living space.”