Wrestling

Life is an interesting mix of totally wonderful and enjoyable experiences; treats, time with friends and new adventures. And loneliness, discomfort, hard questions and suffering. I suppose I'm incredibly lucky to have so much of the good!
Lately amidst fun and chances to minister, my heart has been wrestling with some difficult questions. Every day I work here I meet and serve alongside families who do not eat 3 meals a day, their homes teeter on stilts over filthy water, or rise as shacks over years of garbage. I test the vision of children who don't even have clothes, and are instead covered in black dirt I don't want to touch and have sores oozing from their faces. I'm not trying to make you feel guilty or to paint for you a sort of World Vision commercial, I'm simply laying out the honest truth I see day by day. And the thing is I'm only the one seeing it. I'm not the mother, daughter, father, son living that life. I'm not them and I can't imagine being them. But being among these children of God brings so many questions to which I have no answers.
How now do I live? Is it okay, that people live like this and I go to Starbucks? And how should I respond to the child begging at my taxi window? And is it okay that my heart really longs to live a certain kind of comfortable life at home? And what does the Bible say, what did Jesus do, how has He called us to live?
My mind is swirling with these, wondering about the financial choices I make each day, wondering how I am to live after this year. Wondering if I can't handle facing the poverty, who will? And there aren't easy answers, there might not be any answers. There's just this entangled web of questions, one leads to the next and then back again. I don't think that it's either/or, black and white. Instead it's just a mess.
I encourage you to ask these questions too. Sorry, I'm encouraging you to enter a confusing and worrisome state! But I think it's important, and I think it's essential to being a disciple. And it's tough. If you have any wisdom on the subject, or if you've asked similar questions, then let's chat about it, cause I'm looking for wisdom and Godly answers.