Profile in Courage

Ray Bakke has said that some things in history have been just too difficult or too dangerous to do, so God has called a woman to do it. Such is the case of one of my DMin students, Po Ming of Hong Kong. She lives in the Kowloon City district, a space with thousands of poor that many in Hong Kong stigmatize and avoid. Here in Costa Rica where she is studying in the program I am teaching, you see her reaching out instinctively to children in the Los Tables slum of San Jose. It is an extremely dangerous area we visited and served in, and you see her loving children on the spot where there had just been a murder last month. Po Ming came from a difficult family situation growing up, but broke free and came to Christ, who has now called her back to the very kind of environment she had left. She planted a church for the urban poor of Hong Kong, and now is part of an NGO that reaches out there. I don't know whether I am teaching the class, or she is. I know that I am humbled by her courage, and so sad that most what she does is invisible to most of the world. But there is One other who sees, and I know that there are tears of joy in his eyes tonight too.

Red Light Prayers - Part 2

After having spent this night with my students on deserted Costa Rican street corners in conversation with young transvestite men who were selling themselves, the haunting words of Octavio Paz pulled at me.

I am a man: Little do I last

And the night is enormous.

But I look up:

the stars write.

Unknowing I understand:

I too am written,

at at this very moment

someone spells me out.

They were men but their names were 

Nicole and Jasamina,

Alejandra,

Stephania and Erica. 

I will not forget them.

The bondage they are in, like the city corner they inhabit, is a

Dark and cavernous abyss,

An empty anonymity.

But I knew that God knew who they really were, knew their stories, felt their pain and alienation, was loving them even as they were.

I knew he was tracing the letters of their real names in stardust,

In the tail of some comet,

Was longing that they come to know their true identity in Christ, longing to free them to be loved with a pure love, as he intended. 

It's 1am but I wonder if I will sleep tonight

Knowing that they are still under the night sky, 

Praying that they will look up.

Red light prayers

Your prayers are appreciated tonight as I take a group of Bakke students to support a ministry that reaches out to women who are practicing prostitution as well as transvestites, all of whom hang out in the parks in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica from 7pm to midnight. Obviously, because of language barriers and lack of expertise, our participation is via prayer and whatever interaction we can foster through translation. We want to communicate hope and grace. Our prayers will rise through the glare of neon red tonight, heard by a God who is not scandalized by the poor choices of his children, nor passive toward a system that often forces such choices. Senor Jesus, nececitamos su ayuda.