I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
(Romans 12:1) NKJV
The slough of despond is a phrase which occurs in Paul Bunyan’s “A Pilgrim’s Progress.” It’s where the main character, Christian, toils heavily and has to be rescued by a character called the Evangelist.
We, me and the Holy Spirit, are not in a slough or feeling any despond, we’re organizing devotional material and evaluating some of our earlier work. It would seem that we experienced a slough in 2018. That was five years after we received our call and we couldn’t understand why we weren’t getting anywhere.
Now that we’re 12 years out from our original call in Ethiopia it’s possible to take a 30,000 foot birds-eye view. We’re right on track, and we have been the whole time. We provide the following as a retrospective, in the hope that it may be an encouragement to someone else who feels like they’re stuck.
The Slough of 2018
Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.
(1 Corinthians 3:12-15) KJV
I had to move out, so I moved to an apartment community where there were a large number of Burmese Karen refugees, a group with which I had strong ties because of working with them at the University of North Carolina.
This was about 2007. I got stuck on my 8th time reading the Bible and floundered such that I restarted a couple of times but couldn’t seem to stick with it. I was feeling pretty washed up at this point. I had been a single parent for 8 years, and under the strict oversight of the fundamentalist church this was not a problem, but now that I was out on my own there was nothing to stop me from getting involved with, and marrying one of the Karen. Here also I took a job 80 miles away in Winston-Salem, believing that my wife would get a job there and we would move the family.
The good that came out of this was that I became involved with the church again and did everything I could to help the Burmese Karen community. But they didn’t need my help. We had a child and very soon after got separated, then back together, then separated, then back together, then separated again. And so this is where I found myself. 3 children, 3 baby mommas, commuting 160 miles everyday to work the night shift. Sometimes it felt like I was barely existing, just going through this difficult slog every week. I spent a good bit of time with the Christian Karen Burmese refugee community, but since I didn’t understand the language I wasn’t able to really appreciate it very much. The parable of the sower was on my mind.
And then there is the passage in 1 Corinthians. So my thoughts have been on this ridiculous mess I have made, and seem still capable of making it worse, coupled with the great riches that have been given me. What have I got to show for it? Just a bunch of angry people and a complicated, busy life. What at this point can I possibly contribute?
And that, my friends, was how I felt 7 years ago
Salvation
- Call upon the name of Jesus Christ,
- believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
- confess your sin.
