Single Step

There are just so many things I don’t know. This may seem obvious to you but the magnitude of that truth hits me in the face at frequent intervals these days. I feel I have to say it out loud.

When I was in Nashville at the North American Baptist Women’s Conference on Human Trafficking last October someone recommended a book by fellow Canadian, Esther Barnes. She served as editor of the Ontario/Quebec Baptist Women’s department magazine called The Link & Visitor and has recently published a book entitled Coming Together: A History of the Women’s Department, Baptist World Alliance. I read it on our Lebanon trip.

You may remember we met with the Lebanese women while in Beirut? I failed to mention, when I picked up Esther’s book that evening I read about Mona Mardelli, who works with the YWCA in Lebanon and who happened to be one of the women I met that afternoon. While I recalled this story to the women around the board table in Chicago this past weekend, the same sort of thing happened. I came home, picked up the book to refresh my memory on North American Baptist Women’s (NABWU) history. I read about women I have conversed with these past few weeks whose photos and contributions were included within its pages; some of whom were sitting around the board table with me and who are making significant contributions toward helping vulnerable women in North America. Wanda Lee (WMU), Brenda Mann (CBWOQ), Michelle Miller (REED), to name a few.

This NABWU work of “encouraging women to live out kingdom life especially in the area of helping the vulnerable” is not new to me in principle. For the first 10 years of my faith walk, the focus of that vulnerable group was teenage girls through Young Life. Then it was families and children through my home education contacts. The scope has grown to include marginalized women in local, national and international contexts and so it makes sense that the awareness of my ignorance grows along with it. As does the wonder at being called to contribute to work of this nature. I find myself asking, “Are you sure you have the right girl?”

There have been days, like everyone else, where I have felt overwhelmed with the needs within the walls of my own home. Laundry piles up, the floors need washing, the fridge is empty. And there was a time, some 30 years ago, when I did not know how to face all of that.

The number of things I don’t know how to respond to now include the magnitude of the human trafficking industry, to work toward changing Canadian laws to ensure the demand issue is addressed and prostituted women receive mercy and opportunity to exit. Or how to communicate to my Canadian friends the need for Muslim-background believers to be educated in biblical theology so they can return to their country of origin and the church that sponsored them so that they can be bright lights in the dark Islamic world. Where will the money come from to help my Arab sisters?

Let’s face it, even in our frenzied information age, no one will know it all. Maybe that’s not the point. Maybe it’s more important to do something and not let the not-knowing-what-to-do paralyze us. Whichever way I contribute, I am well aware, I am giving out of personal poverty.

“Start with God,” Proverbs 1 says, “the first step in learning is bowing down to God.”

The singlemost important step I can take is to start with God. Yes, it is a very good place to start. The rest will follow. In the upside-down economy of God, where a tiny middle aged, homemaking woman can affect change, there is hope for redemption!